Changes
by Elizabeth Shawnessey
Summary: After a fight with a vampire goes awry, Amy Winchester begins to feel sick. The morning after killing the creature, Amy and her roommate, Taylor Rosen, notice that something's wrong, something that is much more sinister than both of them realize. Set between "In My Time of Dying" and "Everybody Loves A Clown"; eighth in a series; long.
1. Previously On Supernatural

Hey, guys! Guess who's back (back again)! That's right, you guessed it. Anyway, I just wanted to let you say that I had to rush finishing and uploading this one because my new job starts on Sunday, so if this story's not that good, that's why. Hopefully you all like it, but... you know. Well, anyhow, I don't want to take up your time because I'm sure at least one person is eager to jump right in. So, without further adieu, here is the season two premiere of the 11785 series!

* * *

Available for download in PDF. I promise you that I don't have any viruses. I just **strongly recommend **it seeing as this was written in book format. Visit the Tumblr dedicated to this series, "11785", for details.

Or just read it here (:

PREVIOUSLY ON SUPERNATURAL

South Dakota State Hospital  
Aurora, South Dakota  
Friday, November 3, 2006  
10:41 AM

**S**am Winchester's grip pressed tightly into his older brother Dean's bicep, as though making sure he was still real and still right in front of him. The past couple of days had been hell, and things only seemed to be getting worse. If Sam were to lose Dean, too, then everything about Sam's world would fall apart at the seams.

Sam, Dean, and their father, John, had been admitted to the South Dakota State Hospital after a crash involving a semi-truck barreling toward them at full speed and what was now the pretzel that had once been his brother's 1967 Chevy Impala. Sam had managed to survive with barely a few scratches whereas Dad and Dean appeared worse for wear, even worrying the EMTs who had airlifted them from the crash site. Within a few minutes of being there, and after a series of brain tests and blood scans, Sam had been released to walk the halls alone while the rest of his family were left in separate rooms, locked behind doors Sam couldn't get into as doctors and nurses worked on them.

For a moment, after hours of excruciating waiting, things had looked up when one of the doctors found Sam and reported that his father was going to be fine. However, that news was crippled when the other doctor, the one observing Dean, told him that his brother was seriously injured and not likely to wake up again. Despite the fact that Dr. Williams had made sure to mention that Dean was fighting hard, and that people in his condition—people with extreme blood loss, contusions to his liver and kidneys, and cerebral edema—usually didn't make it out alive but Dean still had a chance, Sam could feel his heart fall to his stomach as he watched the monitors and respirators keeping his brother alive continue to beep monotonously.

Ultimately, however, Sam refused to give up hope. Once he discovered his father was alive and well, Sam had automatically wanted to know if there was anything mystical they could do to help Dean, to snap him out of the coma he appeared to be in. Unfortunately, after ten seconds of conversation with the man, Sam was already surging with anger. It seemed to him—no, it was obvious—that John Winchester had already given up on his son. As his father sat on the bed he had been assigned, cradling the broken arm he was saddled with, Sam wanted nothing more than to shake him hard and knock him to his senses. There was no way they could just give up on Dean. They had to help him. They had to fight to get him back.

Adversely, Dad seemed to be more intent on keeping his eyes on The Colt rather than his kid. In the heat of Sam's anger, though he kept it buried in his chest to keep from fighting with his father in the middle of a crowded hospital, Dad had given him the order to track down wherever the remainder of the Impala had been towed to and to meet up with Bobby Singer once he arrived to take it back to his place in Sioux Falls. Following the command with little hesitation, and receiving a list from Dad asking him to get a few spell ingredients for protection from the demon, Sam had hitched a ride to a junk yard off of I-83, finding that Bobby had already beat him there and was examining the remnants of Dean's beloved car, which resembled a tin soda can after being smashed.

"Look, Sam. This... this just ain't worth a tow. I say we empty the trunk, sell the rest for scrap," Bobby had said, checking out the flank of the vehicle that proved his point.

The whole passenger's side was smashed in, some of it even reaching the driver's seat. Dean had been sitting behind Sam with Dad taking the brunt of the hit, but Dean had already been injured by the demon they were after, the one that John seemed to want to keep The Colt from.

Arguing with Bobby for a moment about the state of the Impala, and how Dean would want to fix it once he got better, Sam waited for Bobby to agree with him before passing along Dad's note, realizing the look on the older man's face was one of disbelief. Automatically knowing that something was up his father's sleeve, Sam pestered Bobby for information, finally getting it once the Impala was loaded onto the back of his tow truck.

"Your dad's got somethin' up his sleeve, Sam. This ain't a protection spell. This summons a demon. Powerful one, too," Bobby had explained as he got behind the wheel and waited for Sam to slip into the passenger's seat. "I don't know what your daddy thinks he's pullin', but I don't think it's anything that'll help your brother."

Again, anger flared in Dad's direction, causing Sam to want to ask Bobby to give up on getting his father's stuff and just take him back to the hospital so he could punch the man in his bruised face. Unfortunately, Sam knew that Dad would be pissed at him, probably more pissed than what both Sam and Dean had imagined he would be when he found out they had used another one of the four precious bullets left in The Colt, the man harnessing an anger comparable to a category five hurricane. There was only one shot left now, and based on Dad's intent to get the thing away from his boys and into his forceful hands, Sam could tell that his father was doing as he was, attempting to mask his anger until everything was right again, until their family was back to functioning like normal, to rip both Sam and Dean a new one for wasting bullets on demons that had nearly killed them all.

Waiting as Bobby dropped the Impala off in his lot and hurried inside to gather what John Winchester had asked him for, Sam sat inside the tow truck, his legs feeling restless as his heart hammered on. He didn't want to be away from his brother for too long, especially without any way for the doctors to contact him in case anything went wrong. He wanted to be there if something happened, or if Dean woke up from his coma. He couldn't trust Dad to tell him the moment anything changed, good or bad, his father probably still too involved in tracking down the demon to give a damn about either of his sons.

Getting out of the car to calm his nerves, Sam walked around to the Impala to inspect it again, finding the duffle bag he carried with him as he and his brother traveled lodged deep in the broken back seat. Pulling free a new shirt and jacket to switch out of the bloody ones he wore, Sam changed as he waited, shrugging on his coat just as Bobby emerged from his house.

Taking him and the newly-acquired items back to the hospital, Bobby waved Sam off as he drove away, the incensed feeling that had overcome Sam after being told of Dad's plan flooding him once again. Bursting into Dad's room, Sam headed straight for the window to try to calm down, staring out it into the trees surrounding the hospital as he tried to find the right words to say. However, his father started the conversation before Sam could choose his opening statement carefully, sparking an argument that was long overdue.

"Did you think I wouldn't find out?"

Playing confused, Dad furrowed his brows. "What are you talking about?"

"That stuff from Bobby, you don't use it to _ward off_ a demon, you use it to _summon_ one!" Sam shouted, trying to keep his voice from carrying out into the hall at the same time as he tried to convey his anger. "You're planning on bringing the demon here, aren't you? Having some stupid macho showdown?"

For a few minutes, Sam and his father went back and forth, the energy in the room rising the more heated their words became. As they fought over who was doing more to help Dean and whether or not Dad cared more about the demon than his son, the argument suddenly came to a halt as the glass of water sitting on Dad's bedside table shattered against the ground. Confused, Sam stared at it before commotion in the hallway stole his attention, causing Sam to leave Dad behind as he went to investigate. Down the corridor, nurses were hurrying in and out of Dean's room, the sound of defibulators charging and shocking his brother meeting Sam's ears before he took in the sight inside. Dean's chest was bare as two metal paddles were clamped against his heart and ribs, his body bowing upward with each electric current that ran through him. From the doorway, Sam watched in horror as his brother continued to flatline, the noise of the hectic heart rate monitor filling the room as though to urge on the doctors helping Dean.

_"I said get back!" _

His own heart stopping, Sam looked around the room for the source of the echo he had just heard. The voice had been Dean's, almost as though his brother was a few feet from him, piercing the veil as he suddenly yelled at… something. All at once renewed with hope that Dean was up and walking around somewhere, just out of sight, Sam listened to the rhythmic beeping of a pulse and continued to stare at Dean's body, his mind racing as he tried to sort through what to do. Making a decision, Sam turned away from his brother's hospital room and went to check on his father before making a quick stop at the store he had seen down the road.

It was dark by the time he returned, the paper bag containing what he had purchased clutched in his hand as though this was his one lifeline to Dean. Coming in to speak to his brother, and feeling stupid as he did so, Sam set up the Ouija board on the floor at the foot of Dean's bed, sensing some sort of snarky comment coming from his brother's mouth when he saw what he was doing.

"Dean? Dean, are you here?"

Letting his fingers lightly touch the pointer, Sam waited a few minutes as he felt something grab it from the other side, moving the device up to the top of the board toward the "yes" that was situated there. Sighing in relief, Sam spoke to his brother before the pointer began to move again, this time spelling out letters that confused Sam. Why would his brother be hunting in a hospital? Asking as much, Sam's heart sank when he finally saw why, knowing that Dean was screwed if Sam didn't do something to help.

Getting to his feet and leaving the board behind, Sam's heart hammered in his chest as he walked away muttering to himself. "There's gotta be a way. Dad'll know what to do."

Unfortunately, by the time Sam returned to his father's room, the bed was empty, Dad gone, along with the stuff Sam had picked up from Bobby's. Automatically knowing what his father was doing, Sam grabbed the man's journal out of his discarded coat pocket and skimmed through it, heading back to Dean's room as if to confer with him. Speaking to the emptiness, Sam flipped through the book and found the page dedicated to Reapers, his eyes not taking in much that would help him or his brother in figuring out what to do.

Sitting for hours on the edge of Dean's bed, Sam read through the book dozens of times before giving up to stare out the window, the feeling of absolute helplessness finally overtaking him. While he wasn't about to give up on Dean, he didn't know what to do or how to bring his brother back. He would keep trying, using every avenue he could, but he didn't know where to start. As tears began to well in his eyes in frustration, the sun was beginning to appear on the horizon. Taking a deep breath as he was about to get up to check for Dad again, the sound of Dean's stuttering breathing caught his ears before one big gasp overtook the room.

Swallowing hard in disbelief, Sam acted before he could process what was going on, calling for a doctor and waiting for one to arrive. As he sat in the corner while Dean was observed and tested well into morning, Dr. Williams finally came in to speak with them, telling both Winchesters with stunned disbelief that every internal contusion was gone and that Dean was fully out of the woods. Sighing in relief as the doctor disappeared, it was only a moment later that Dad arrived in the doorway, the sight of him after the night-long battle he had faced _alone_ causing Sam to become irritated. He had spent the past thirty-six hours awake and researching, never stopping to rest as he tried to find something to help Dean, and for most of that, Dad had been gone or resolved that there would be nothing, leaving Sam to search for a solution on his own.

However, after only a short spar that seemed to be one-sided, Sam noticed something in his father's appearance, making him appear weak and frail, almost as though the strength that John Winchester always carried with him was gone. As Dad asked in a heavy voice for Sam to get him "a cup of caffeine", his father's code for coffee, Sam agreed out of surprise, confusion overtaking him as to why Dad was suddenly changed, the thought bothering him as he wandered down the hall.

Unfortunately, it would only be a few minutes before he found out.

Heading down the barren corridor with the warm cup of coffee in his hand, Sam could sense a coldness spreading throughout the hallway, giving him the feeling that something was wrong. Rounding to his father's room, Sam suddenly knew why. Lying lifeless on the floor was John Winchester, his body splayed out as if he had fallen on the spot and would never move again. Dropping what was in his hands, Sam rushed for his dad, practically screaming for help and waiting for it to arrive. Within a few seconds, doctors flanked them, separating Sam from his father and hefting Dad back onto the bed near where he lay. Unsure of what to do, Sam made to get Dean, finding that his brother was already headed his way.

Again, Sam watched from the doorway as crowds of people worked on another member of his family, the defibulator out and pushed against Dad's chest. Grabbing onto Dean for dear life, both of them stood helplessly aside as doctors struggled to bring their father back to the land of the living, the effort seeming futile. As a nurse tried to keep them out of the room, Dean pleaded with her as they both willed Dad to wake up and be fine, just like Dean had moments before. Unfortunately, it seemed as though whatever luck Dean had encountered didn't seem to be working for Dad. As Dr. Williams passed the paddles back to his assistant, the flatline of the monitor becoming deafening, only one thing was audible over the sound, the one thing Sam and Dean Winchester had never wanted to hear:

_"I'll call it. Time of death: 10:41 AM."_


	2. Prologue

PROLOGUE

Morgan's Apartment  
New York, New York  
Wednesday, March 17, 1976  
4:43 AM

**I**t had been a night Morgan Callahan would never forget, one of torture and pain that never seemed to end. Twenty-one was an excruciating number, one she had known to look out for, the year that would change her life in a way she had never anticipated despite the fact that generations of women in her family before her had undergone the same transformation.

Was she human anymore? She didn't know. Hell, she didn't know if anything about her was even remotely close to a person. She had seen so many things during her life, starting from when she had been a child, that everything that might or might not have once resembled humanity inside of her had now faded away with her short-lived innocence.

There was only one thing she knew about herself: that she was different, that she was changed. She had undergone the week leading up to her twenty-first year like a champion, only to buckle down at midnight on the day of like a baby wanting her mother to take care of her. Back then, she hadn't expected it to hurt as much as it did, for her bones to crack and for new muscles to grow, and she hadn't expected to be awake for any of it. But she had been.

Only fifteen minutes beforehand, she had arrived home from her shift at the Uncle Tony's Bistro she worked at down the street, her feet hurting and her back sore from having to load heavy dishes into the washer prior to leaving for the night. At the time, she had been exhausted from having to endure her flu-like week at home, having to miss out on a full paycheck, thinking that nothing could get worse than the hell she had endured prior to the evening before her birthday; but at that time, she hadn't truly known Hell.

The pain had started once the witching hour had, with her whole body buckling in half as she let out screams that would scare werewolves and cried more than enough to send a toddler packing. Her whole entire existence hurt, with images flashing before her eyes as her legs felt as though they were being stretched to their limits and her arms felt heavier than ever before. In fact, for the three hours that proceeded the stroke of midnight, her skin, hair, and bones felt as though they were on fire, with nothing extinguishing them except for the hot tears running down Morgan's face as some sort of release that barely offered any reprieve.

She had been warned about this, about all of it, by her mother back home in Ireland, just like her mother before her had warned her. From when she was a child until now, Morgan had endured years of training and the reminder that someday she would become the woman generations before her had been. At the time, Morgan had thought she could run from it, that if she left home, she could leave her destiny behind. Of all the things she had ever been wrong about, this was the most grandiose of all of them.

As she lay on the floor of her filthy apartment, Morgan had wanted nothing more than to return home to Ireland, to listen to her mother tell her that everything was going to be okay as soon as she learned how to cope with her new reality. But Morgan knew her mother well enough to know that Felicia Callahan would never be so kind-hearted. Half of the reason Morgan had left her home country had been because of the woman's ruthlessness. There was no way Morgan would be accepted back with open arms to the town and family she had abandoned in order to attempt to live in greener pastures overseas.

But she still hoped, and wondered, and thought about it. She had never known anything aside from the coldness Felicia provided, her mother's words of wisdom only coming when it involved dealing with vampires or demons instead of when mean boys and girls at school teased Morgan for being too tall or too different. It was as though the woman had no heart to speak of, it either lost or stolen the moment her mother had taken up the life that had been passed down to her—the life that was now passed down to Morgan, and would eventually be inherited by her daughter in return.

Morgan could understand the indifference that hunting provided. In her time, she had seen things that had changed her view of the world, her view of people. She had seen friends that were killed by vampires, cousins who had been possessed by demons, and everyday strangers who had been slaughtered like cattle by the supernatural. She had killed innocent people that demons had held onto for protection against exorcisms, murdered friends who had been changed so radically by creatures who had fed them their blood, and had shot down those who had been even remotely suspected of being abnormally dangerous. With every kill, she lost a bit of her soul, her mind's eye seeing it flying off like ashes being carried away in a slight breeze.

When she had been eighteen, Morgan had come upon the idea that she could escape the harrowing life she had lived in Ireland for the infamy of New York City, naïvely understanding that things would be different in America as opposed to how they were in her homeland. As soon as she had arrived on shore, crossing the Atlantic in a shipping boat due to having no money to spare, Morgan had come to realize just how diverse things would be.

It had been night when she stepped off the barge bobbing in the ocean. The harbor had been silent except for the waves lapping against the docks and the occasional shouts of seals far off in the distance. She had been walking with no destination, unsure of where to go, with nothing to her name except for the bag she carried and the weapon she had hidden in her leather boot. Not even an hour had passed before she encountered her first vampire, and not even a minute had passed before she had killed him without blinking an eye.

And that hadn't been the last creature Morgan had encountered during her time in New York, not even close. As dusk quickly came, after work was finished at the end of each day, and after she had changed out of her uniform, Morgan would often be out looking for something to hunt, getting the feeling that there was evil lurking beneath the chaos that was the Big Apple. Occasionally, she found things before they found her, but most of the time, the forces of darkness were aware of her search for them, quickly attacking her before she had time to unsheathe her machete or level her crossbow. More than once, she had come close to death, her weapon getting turned on her and the hunter becoming the hunted, but she had escaped her final fight each time due to the training her mother had provided from such a young age.

However, her last encounter before her painful night had been a year ago. Without anything to kill, Morgan had slowly began to accept the lie that she was becoming the daughter her mother didn't want her to be, the normal girl who made a living in a diner and slept on a bed in an apartment that had seen better days. She had believed that she was no different than the women she worked with, the men she went out with, or the friends she had made. Human, all of them, and so she believed herself to be as well.

But on the Saturday before her birthday, Morgan had known differently. Her mother had prepared her for years for the changes, coaching her for the agony it would incur and the wrath the transformations would have on her body. As soon as the first wave had hit, Morgan had realized it had been foolish to believe that she could abandon her destiny simply by abandoning the lush Irish shores. The hereditary magic that this gift carried would follow her from one coast to the other, and it would follow her to Hell once its course had finished.

By the time the pain had subsided, Morgan was no longer a person but a warrior, a weapon, the ultimate weapon humanity had in the never-ending battle against evil. She had accepted it as every bone in her body was broken to be rebuilt to be better, stronger, faster, smarter. Love, friendship, and family was no longer a necessity but a hindrance to the cause. Morgan understood that now better than ever.

There was a remoteness that came over her that made her no different than her mother, that made her no different than the Callahan women before her. She was the sword that Michael had wielded in the banishing of Lucifer, the force that had kept Hades from Mount Olympus, and the bludgeon that had allowed humanity to remain unsuspecting of the darkness that lived in discord for centuries—a cold, sharp, calculating blade to be used against every evil thing that walked amongst the innocent. She was a thing that demons should fear, that vampires should run from, and that Hunters should shy away from. She was everything that they wanted to be, and she was the power that they should be afraid of.

She had been Called.

As the early morning rose on the horizon of Morgan Callahan's twenty-first birthday, she had accepted her future and her destiny, the fate that had been handed to the female line of her derivation centuries ago. There was no use running and there was no use fighting against it. She had nowhere else to go, no place to run, and it was better just to fulfill her mission and let her body be used for the cause she was meant to serve, the cause her family had served since the Dark Ages.

Getting up as she did every day, Morgan prepared for her new life in a way dissimilar to her daily routine. As she tested the strength and speed she had now possessed, she broke walls and furniture that no longer felt like hers. In the nights that followed, she hoped for visions that pointed her in the direction of demons, never once receiving a prophetic dream much like her mother had always been given. In the weeks after her twenty-first, the blatant agreement to the life she had been handed had folded Morgan in half, breaking her spirit when she realized that not only did she contain the strength of her adversaries, it was a strength that they all wanted as their own, that they would kill her to obtain.

No matter how far she ran, from New York to Philadelphia to Providence to Boston, the creatures of the night followed, their relentless hunt for her becoming just as ruthless as her hatred for them. As she took them out one by one, she realized that there was no running from them just as there had been no running from her fate. Their numbers were insurmountable, engulfing her in the hundreds of thousands. The Army of Hell was an army that couldn't be fought alone, though it was a battle the other side seemed intent on winning, their obvious advantage playing directly into their hands.

But Morgan fought on despite it all, learning quickly that she wasn't unaccompanied in the righteous war she crusaded, unaided by anyone like her mother had wanted her to believe as a child, instead that people like her were so innumerable that they were totally alone in this campaign to bring justice to the darkness. There were others like her, she steadfastly discovered, spread out throughout the nation and the world, their army much smaller and much less powerful than the Hellions who were taking them out one-by-one, though still more populous than Morgan had initially been lead to understand.

In the years that she moved between states in an attempt to slip underneath the demons' radar as they searched for her and people like her, keeping her secret and keeping herself hidden, Morgan had met only a handful of girls bestowed with her gifts, finding that they all lived and communicated in an underground network to keep their numbers thriving and the netherworld off their trail. However, as time went on, with the battle resulting in casualties on both sides, Morgan had become scared, her humanity breaking through as she watched her friends and allies die in waves as demons took them down to their knees through torture before delivering the final blow that killed them all.

On the night before her final fight, after living a life that had been tumultuous in a way that would have ended her faster had she stayed in Ireland, Morgan had fought her best and died with a bleeding heart, both literally and figuratively. The day before, she had known she wouldn't see the sunrise on the horizon of her forty-fifth year, the dream she had had the night before pointing her on the path she had taken to ensure that she hadn't died in vain. John Winchester had to know the truth in order for their daughter to be protected. He would be the only one Amelia would have left, and the only way he could guard her from the demons who wanted her power as much as they wanted her soul was for him to know what she was and what their child would be—the legacy that Amelia now carried on her shoulders, despite the fact that she was only a teenager and years from inheriting her endowments the night Morgan's essence had been taken from this Earth. However, John still had to know the truth, and she had told him every detail in the letter she had written and the journal she had sent along with it.

By the time the sun was high in the sky on March 17th, 1999, John would learn everything—that their daughter, like her mother before her and her mother before her, was _Chosen_.


	3. Chapter 1

ONE

West Haven Lumber Yard  
West Haven, Connecticut  
Friday, November 3, 2006  
11:09 PM

**T**he creature in front of her reared its ugly head, recoiling from the backhanded punch Amy Winchester had landed across its face. Deep, menacing, red-tinted eyes stared back at her in the overhead moonlight, sharp white teeth glinting off the glow to show the fangs the creature possessed, set in its mouth like several pointed daggers intent on drawing blood.

She had followed the thing four miles from the Starbucks across the street from where she went to school at Yale University, trailing behind it as quietly as she could as it crossed over into the small town of West Haven in the darkening dusk, the creature seeming none the wiser that he was being pursued. As the sky grew blacker, with the sun sinking completely by the time they had approached the half-way point between the two cities, Amy had continued to feel the weird squirming sensation in her gut that usually signaled demons, the warning sign she seemed to come equipped with that tipped her off whenever she was about to come into contact with anything supernatural.

In the past six months, Amy's life had changed in a way she had never expected, with her focus shifting from the importance of classes and homework to creatures and research. The night John Winchester had appeared at the North Shore Hotel to take her away from the adopted family Amy had grown up knowing, The Foresters, Amy's entire worldview had been altered in more ways than one. As she hopped from town to town with the man, trailing behind two "armed and dangerous" suspects that her biological father the FBI agent was tracking, she had taken jobs at diners that no one frequented, watching out for the targets John had asked her to keep an eye on.

But it hadn't been during her summer away that everything was revolutionized, her life not even altering the moment she learned that the men she had been watching from June until August had been her biological brothers rather than violent criminals like John had wanted her to believe. Instead, after enduring the last two weeks at home in the middle of some unspoken freeze-out going on between her adopted family, it had been at Yale that everything changed, her normal life slowly coming to a stop the moment three girls had been killed on campus, three girls that Amy had known personally.

When one by one, Rachel Richardson, Celia Brown, and Sarah Clarke were found dead on the pavement underneath the broken windows to their dorms on the top floor of each residence hall they had been assigned to by the school, Amy and her friends Taylor Rosen and Bailey Yost had investigated, albeit unwillingly on Amy's part, the incidents that were being ruled as "fatal accidents" by the authorities. While Taylor and Bailey invested all their time into searching for the ghost that was behind the attacks, a theory that Bailey had provided on the night of Celia's death, Amy had shied away from helping, instead staying out of Dodge for as long as possible before she could no longer keep her nose clean of it, being brought into the situation the moment her roommate had been tossed from her reinforced, fifth-floor window.

It didn't take long before the real reason Bailey Yost had nudged them into investigating had come to light, with the girl—actually, demon—admitting what she was and why she was there as she stood beside the broken glass Sarah had been pushed out of, going through a monologue Amy only remembered half of, her mind being too scared to soak up the words while she attempted to deal with the fact that demons were real and she was standing right in front of one.

After a fight that had ended with a coma for Taylor and a bloody mess for Amy—with the black-eyed creature shoving the latter into the shards of jagged glass that had been left behind in the window and tearing her shoulder blades to pieces as it roughly twisted its victim against the shattered remains, blood spilling everywhere, the amount of it flowing being enough to kill Amy had something in her not fought back—she had been saved by the man she had abandoned in Bayview, Maine, the man who seemed to know how to exorcise demons as though saying the incantation to banish them was nothing more than daily routine. Distracted as the murderous being doubled over and vomited black smoke in a way that she would never imagine to happen in real life, Amy hadn't noticed as John left, her mind too torn between her friend lying unconscious in the hallway and the sound of heavy footsteps making their way up the stairs toward her, shouts following as paramedics and police officers took in the scene that had been left behind by the battle.

At the time, Amy had been resolute in her decision to stay away from the paranormal entities John seemed well-versed in fighting, citing that as John Winchester's trade and a family business she didn't want to get herself into. As she had walked back from the hospital after seeing Taylor, staying the whole night after she was given fifty stitches and the "you should have died" speech by Dr. Guest, waiting for her friend to gain consciousness rather than return home, Amy had come to the conclusion that she wanted nothing more than to be normal, to remain the same Amelia Mae Winchester she had always been, falling asleep as soon as she got back to her new dorm in Dwight Hall and waking up revitalized by her choice.

However, Taylor seemed to have taken the adverse approach to dealing with what had happened to them, instead wrapping herself further into the supernatural and attempting to point Amy in the same direction. In the month that followed the deaths on campus, Amy had had to stay away from her friend while Taylor glued herself to her computer and the stack of books detailing forces of darkness that she had bought from various creepy shops near school, the girl sharing everything she learned whenever she encountered Amy in the living area of their shared suite, not sparing her roommate any expense when it came to the gory details that she'd rather not hear. Instead spending more time out with Robin Lister, a girl she had roomed with her sophomore year, Amy had made a conscious effort to distance herself from Taylor until her friend got the hint, the evenings spent at the gym or at the library wasted as soon as Taylor confronted Amy with an article detailing missing children in a town not far from where they went to school.

Though Amy had made her decision, and had been vocal about it every time Taylor brought up the idea that they should go on a hunt together, it seemed as if her friend had learned exactly how to prey on Amy's sympathies, telling her that not taking the case would be about as equal as advocating the monster's actions. Finally agreeing to it after a night of debating the pros and cons of doing so, Amy and Taylor had left the safety and security that their dorm room provided, renting a car and driving the forty miles to Willow, Connecticut while Taylor explained the steps to a successful hunting trip. Half-listening, only coming into the conversation when Taylor told her that they would have to come up with aliases that were plausible enough to convince the parents of the victims to undergo an interview, and thinking back on John and his FBI persona, Amy had followed her friend's lead as she navigated their way through the case they were taking, Amy still reticent in her involvement.

Unfortunately, it wasn't long before Taylor's piloting had gone south. While they had been searching through the house that belonged to David Hollbrook, the man committed up in Norwich and not likely to be home anytime soon, Amy had had a bad feeling about what they were doing, solidified the moment the door had been broken down and both girls had been arrested by the local police, shoved into a cop car, and taken to the station near Hartford. As soon as they arrived at the small, brick-front precinct, the tables had been turned and the interviewers had soon been on the receiving end of the questions, none of their answers or explanations seeming to be satisfactory enough for the man who turned out to be the sheriff. Locking them up in holding cells, and telling them that they wouldn't be able to trample on what he was doing from there, ominous words on their own, Amy had nearly folded with anxiety as she and Taylor were placed behind bars, Amy wanting nothing more than to give up on this job and go straight back to New Haven.

Ultimately, it seemed as though life was never going to be that simple again. As Amy and Taylor talked over their options for getting released, Amy had spotted something out of the ordinary, something that gave her a wave of familiarity as the black wool coat John Winchester never seemed to be without came into view behind three officers crowding the desk twenty feet from where the two girls stood. Not even having to try to get his attention, John had locked in on Amy and Taylor moments after the former noticed him, letting them out of their confinements and roughly demanding that they go back to school and stay there, telling them both exactly what Amy already wanted to do. Overly willing to follow his command, Amy had watched while John returned inside the police station, getting ready to leave Willow in her rearview mirror as soon as she got back to the rental car parked in David Hollbrook's driveway, the silver Lexus they had taken all the way from Yale.

However, it seemed Taylor wasn't so eager to take John's advice, leaving Amy behind in Willow following an argument between the two, and Taylor's sudden grand theft auto outside of a tiny clothing boutique at the end of the small town's main drag. After waiting hours for a way home, Amy had decided to stay in a motel room until she figured out what to do, Taylor appearing not long later to drag her back into the case Amy wanted nothing to do with, John Winchester appearing yet again as though the fates were sending her a sign that she wouldn't be able to escape the man no matter how hard she tried. Trailing behind him as the two girls attempted to finish the same case the man was working, Amy and Taylor watched as he popped in and out of abandoned houses, the action that was long overdue finally kicking into gear the moment their cars arrived at a deserted warehouse in Chicklow.

For the past few months, since the end of her summer away from home, strange things had been happening to Amy physically, ranging from sudden bursts of strength at odd times, to the squirming in her gut whenever demons were near—something that seemed to be faulty since it only worked half the time—to Amy's unexplainable ability to fight as though she had been training for a kickboxing match her whole life. On that night, while she ran from the car to follow John down to the basement of the forgotten building—something she never would have done before, Amy always being too reserved to take immediate action on anything—she had felt something in her kick into gear, as though someone had flipped a switch that had knocked her from the driver's seat of her body into the passenger's side while she rescued the abducted kids and tried to fight off the creature John seemed intent on taking down himself.

On the drive back into Willow in pursuit of a _criatura_ on the loose, Amy had felt something stab at her chest, the pain echoing something she would feel in the weeks that followed her last encounter with her biological father. Racing into one of the main Colonial homes situated around a park built in the middle of Willow, John and Amy had worked side-by-side to kill the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Amy stabbing it in the chest with an axe while John delivered the final blow of a bullet to its head. However, the fight didn't end there, with the sheriff that had laid down the law back at the station appearing with a dozen of his officers, each of them pointing their guns directly at the two Winchesters. Thankfully, none of the men had fired, not even when Amy had pushed their boss into the wall and handcuffed him as though she did it every day, the entourage of policemen leaving in their vehicles shortly after.

Ultimately, the night still had a ways to go. As Amy got ready to leave, getting a ride back to school from John, the man had taken an unexpected detour to an abandoned field out in the middle of Milford, him leaving his truck running while the headlights provided enough illumination for them to see by. Watching him as he tried to teach her certain things, such as roundhouse kicks and the right way to pierce a sword through a creature's heart, Amy wondered what had provoked the sudden lesson at nearly midnight, a look on the man's face while he watched her repeat the same actions over and over again telling her this was more than just some abrupt training camp. Stopping to look at him a few times, Amy could see a mixture of fear and knowing in his expression, something about that reminding her of the way he had been staring at the creature they had just put down.

Ignoring it and carrying on with what he was asking, Amy kept her mind off of the glint in his eye that pointed toward disbelief and disgust, eventually decapitating the coat-rack-turned-dummy that looked like it had been a little worse for wear even before she had started in on it. Leaving it there as he took her back to school, John had said next to nothing on the trip into New Haven, only opening his mouth right at the moment he was about to depart.

"I think you should have this," he had said, holding out an old, leather-bound journal that he obviously wanted her to take. "It was your mother's."

Clutching it to her chest as she watched him disappear down the road, Amy had taken to staring at the diary while she walked back to Dwight Hall, the entire trek spent debating whether or not to read it, curiosity and unease fighting for her attention. It was possible that the book was nothing more than a collection of short stories about her mother's life, things about family and work and friends, but it was also possible that she would be disappointed by what she found in there. She had spent the past two decades wondering what her biological parents were like, and so far, one had managed to be intimidating and slightly frightening. She didn't want her view of her mother to be the same or worse, with whatever might be inside the journal possibly shining an unsavory light on the woman she never met.

However, before she got time to fully argue both sides, Amy had finally arrived at her dorm, getting enveloped in a hug by Taylor, who had been waiting for her for hours, and showing her the diary first off. Surprisingly, Taylor hadn't said much of anything, only angling herself toward it as though she wanted to read it, but instead left Amy up to the decision. For the weeks the followed, two in their entirety, Amy had tried to make a choice, heading to class and taking notes like a normal college student for the first time since the semester had started.

At the end of a fortnight, Amy had made her decision, taking out the journal when she was alone in her suite and quickly learning that the days spent weighing the repercussions had been for naught. As she made her way through the book, Amy had discovered that her mother had been a Hunter much like her father, the entirety of the diary containing nothing more than how-to information when it came to killing certain creatures, occasionally hinting at personal tidbits as stories of encounters with demons, spirits, and werewolves were sprinkled throughout Morgan Callahan's version of Hunting for Dummies.

In the weeks after the initial reading of the journal, with her cracking it open a second and third time as though attempting to memorize it, Amy had felt at war with herself, wondering if Taylor had been right to skip the deliberation over whether or not making the choice to head into hunting had been a good one, instead just doing it because it felt right. It seemed to Amy as though the job was in her blood, with both sides of her lineage seemingly devoted to the cause, and it appeared the paranormal was just as eager to push her into the decision as much as Taylor was.

Ultimately, Amy had made her choice and stayed quiet about it, conducting research on her own and filing the information away in a spiral-bound notebook that she kept with her wherever she went, Morgan's journal often tied to it with an extra-strength rubber band that kept them both glued together. While she knew her friend was doing exactly the same in her own room across the suite, Amy had a hard time following her roommate's unsteady lead when it came to hunting, instead pretending to be doing homework whenever the girl asked what she was doing. Lately, Taylor had been pushy and antsy, wanting to work jobs nearby more than ever, and acting as though she was already addicted to the high that came with putting something in the ground. While Amy wanted to remind her that during their last two hunts, Taylor had been absent for the actual kill that ended the game, she kept her mouth shut, knowing it would provoke Taylor into an argument over the fact that Amy didn't even want to be there whenever it came to the fight between human and creature in the first place.

Unfortunately, Amy now had the feeling her friend had been tipped off as to what Amy had been doing in her room for the past month, with Amy leaving Taylor behind at the Starbucks they had been sitting at with their friend Robin, claiming that she was going to be right back as a tingle in her gut told her to follow the burly, dark-haired frat guy that was talking up two girls near the door. Dropping her shoulder bag over her head, Amy had trailed behind him, the streets they walked quiet and abandoned while the night darkened from the dusk it had been to the early morning it was becoming.

As cat and mouse approached the front of West Haven Lumber, Amy had stayed behind at the opposite corner, watching as the man rounded the store and headed for the chain link fence around back, hopping it and vanished inside. Attempting to remain quiet, Amy had gone under the fence instead of over, wanting to avoid the barbed wire at the top, and cutting herself along her forearm as she wiggled through the gap barely wide enough to allow her slender body through.

However, as soon as the gash in her arm ripped open, it seemed as though the blood scent in the air was the same as adding a drop in the water for sharks, the thing she was following suddenly appearing right in front of her as she got to her feet, its hand grabbing for her throat and slamming her into the metal siding of the store. Opening its mouth, she saw sharp teeth that seemed to extend over pre-existing ones, the creature's head tilting toward her neck as though she were easy prey. Backhanding him with a force that seemed to explode from inside her, Amy dropped to the ground while the creature backed up in surprise, it wiping its face while it bared its teeth again.

Around her, the dirt lot was filled with stacked two-by-fours and plywood, a truck loaded with various lengths of wooden beams sitting abandoned in the night. Dropping her bag near the corner where the shop met its fence, Amy raced for one of the smaller cuts of lumber, finding one that she was able to wrap her hand around and breaking it against the flipped-down bed of the truck. As the cracking of the wood broke through the still night, Amy could hear her pursuant's heavy breathing, wondering how far he was from her and when he was likely to attack.

Though this was the first time since Willow that Amy had taken any sort of case, she had noticed the dead bodies springing up all over town, most of them college students that Amy didn't know, with marks on their throats that looked as though chunks had been taken out of their necks and their corpses drained of blood. She recognized the signs well enough, double checking both what she knew about these things from popular culture and what was written in Morgan's journal, conflicting ideas coming together, though still pointing to the same culprit, another thing she hadn't thought existed: vampires.

Once she had seen the man in the coffee shop, Amy had known almost automatically what he was, her stomach doing the same demon-churning and solidified her supposition. However, why she had followed him all the way to West Haven was a mystery, especially since coming up against one of these things as a naïve Hunter-in-training, albeit Internet training, was about the same as offering herself up to be used as a meal. Ultimately, her body had moved almost on its own, instinctually tracking the thing all the way through town, everything becoming the same as the time she was kicked out of her own mind to make room for the seasoned fighter that came through and took control.

Letting that person squeeze her out of her own head again, Amy strained her hearing to listen for the vampire, clutching the makeshift sake in her hand as though she was certain it was going to kill him. There had been multiple reports on ways to get rid of these things, from wooden stakes to silver to beheading to blood poisoning to some rare flower, and she wasn't sure which one was going to do the deed, not even Morgan's journal being specific, her encounters with vampires smeared as though the ink in her pen hadn't dried by the time she shut the book at the end of the night. Instead, she had to take her best guess, the person overriding her telling her that the thing in her hand would do nothing but irritate the vamp.

Suddenly, Amy felt cold hands wrap their way around her middle, pulling her away from her station by the truck and throwing her onto the ground. Falling onto her back and rolling away, Amy kicked up from the dirt floor, using her arms to do so, and stood with the stake at the ready. In front of her, the vampire sneered, a look of amusement on its face despite the fact that it was obviously annoyed.

"This is going to be good."

Launching itself forward, the vampire hooked Amy around the neck with its elbow, holding her in a headlock and cutting off her oxygen. Struggling against him, Amy used the broken wood in her hand to stab him in the leg, the sharp point of the makeshift stake tearing through his thigh and causing him to drop her. As he bucked over in pain, Amy took her turn to beat him, kicking him in the face and knocking him into the side of the truck. As he stood with his arms wrapped around the bed, groaning in agony at the Amy-inflicted wound, she took her chance, driving the stake right into his heart, standing back as the wood embedded itself into the vampire's chest. Staring at him as though she expected him to explode, Amy waited, noting that all the thing did was stand up straighter and seem unaffected by what she had done. Instead, it reached up and pulled the stake out by the handle, throwing the blood-soaked thing aside and rushing for her, wrapping its arms around her like a python again and holding her tighter, it's obvious strength causing the air to flow out of her lungs faster than normal, faster than if it had been human.

"Bad idea, Sl—"

All of a sudden, the hold the vampire had on her was released as its head rolled off of its shoulders, hitting the ground with a disgusting spray of blood while its body fell limply to the ground. Nearly screaming in revulsion as vampire blood got all over her face and body, Amy jumped away from the carcass, looking up to see who had saved her and expecting to see John Winchester standing there. Instead, Taylor stood poised with a machete in her hand, a look of annoyance on her face that had been mirrored in the vampire's.

"Seriously?"


	4. Chapter 2

TWO

Dwight Hall, Yale  
New Haven, Connecticut  
Saturday, November 4, 2006  
12:27 AM

"**I**t would have been nice if you had told me you were taking jobs around town, Amy. Maybe then you wouldn't have been fighting that thing alone," Taylor said, her voice louder than it should have been for so late an hour, their entire residence hall asleep except for them, the pair of friends who were arguing in the middle of the night. "You could have died, you know. That thing was probably going to kill you if I hadn't shown up."

"I know," Amy said, attempting to make her words sound more apologetic than they had come out, instead appearing as though she were a small child fighting with her mother about the fact that the jeans she was wearing were inappropriate. "I wasn't thinking. I just… I don't know. I just went. I didn't think about it."

Biting her lip in thought, Taylor shook her head as she paced the length of their living area, her heavy shoes clonking against the wood floor and echoing throughout the rest of the apartment-like suite. Both Amy and Taylor stood as they discussed what had happened, the leather couch positioned not far from Amy sitting abandoned as it remained pushed up against the wall harboring Taylor's multiple movie posters. The space around them was covered with magazines, books, and papers, with neither girl thinking of picking up the clutter in their preoccupied states of mind whenever they had time, both too busy researching the same topics and subjects separately to care.

In a moment, Amy had realized how incredibly stupid she had been in hoarding her own information, pretending that she wasn't doing something identical to what Taylor was in her own room across the way. For some reason, Amy had been convinced that she had to find things out on her own instead of following Taylor's haphazard way of working jobs, her best friend seeming to spend less time researching what was going on and instead jumping in head-first without much preamble. Amy, who preferred knowledge to action, had been more interested in gathering intel than putting it to good use, whereas her roommate was the exact opposite. Taylor only wanted to know about creatures until it came to killing them, disregarding everything she had learned in the meantime as soon as the job was done. Taylor's room was stacked with books that had been disregarded after the fact, particularly the _Els Dimonis Mortals D'aigua _Taylor had been so intent on translating during their last hunt that now sat abandoned under her bed.

Still, differences in opinions or not, Amy had been foolish to try to take down a vampire on her own, having never done so before, and instead letting the other half of her, the half that scared her, take over and control her. There was something about those underlying skills that frightened Amy more than she would ever admit, almost as though there was something wrong with her and she contained some sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde syndrome. Whenever she came up against anything supernatural, it was as though the two sides were warring inside of her as they battled for the driver's seat, the stronger side, the one that seemed to know what it was doing, winning out every time. Though she could explain that to Taylor as the reason she had ditched out on their Starbucks run to go kill a vampire, Amy had a feeling all it would do would earn her the same look John Winchester had given her while they had been training out in that field, the one that said he was disturbed by her.

Instead, Amy let Taylor get mad at her for going at it alone, citing her wrong and making a mental note to amend it as soon as possible. While Taylor went on, as she often did, about the same subjects over and over again—"You could have been killed, Amy. If I hadn't saved you, you would have been dead. You could have been made into a vampire!"—Amy finally took a seat on the sofa, relaxing into the cushions before she realized that she was still covered in blood, her cream-colored cardigan now permanently stained and destined for the trash can. Taking it off while Taylor talked, Amy pulled at the straps of her camisole, finding that it, too, was splattered with red.

By the time Taylor finished, the clock on the wall behind her read nearly half past midnight, with exhaustion coming over Amy in waves, the adrenaline that had been pumping through her during the fight now subsiding entirely and leaving her feeling weak and tired. Bidding her friend goodnight while Taylor sighed discontentedly, resigned from the conversation they had had, Amy hugged her roommate before heading for the bathroom door and turning on the light, glancing back at Taylor while she took a seat in the spot Amy had abandoned, turning on the television and listening to the news.

"_In other related stories, Marie Rudisill, better known as The Fruitcake Lady on _The Tonight Show_ has passed away at the age of 95..._"

Flipping the knob of the shower, Amy let the steam build in the bathroom while she took in her appearance in the mirror. It was a good thing neither of them had encountered anyone on their way back to Dwight Hall, with Amy's dark brown hair matted with red, her face streaked with blood and seeming to get into her eyes and the corners of her mouth. Picking up her toothbrush while the reflective glass fogged, Amy tried to rid her tongue of the taste of copper that seemed to flood it, the mint doing little to wash it out.

Giving up on trying to cover up the gross flavor, Amy rinsed the tang away the best she could before stripping off her clothes, taking a long hot shower and watching as scarlet stained the drain. By the time she finished, the steam had done nothing more than exhaust her further, her muscles relaxing and feeling like jell-o beneath her as she walked across the living area to get to her bedroom, the towel she was wrapped in still heated despite the frigid space she was crossing. Taylor had gone into her own room, seeming to find nothing interesting on the news, and had opened the window before leaving, letting the heavy November cold waft in through the crack, the cold that Amy hadn't noticed until now. While she had been trailing the vampire, her skin seemed impervious to the chill, another oddness she could chock up to the unexplained changes that came after meeting John Winchester.

Closing herself off from the rest of her suite, Amy got into her pajamas and turned on her own television, finding the same news rerun Taylor had been watching out in the living room. On the screen, the reports from eleven o'clock this evening were replayed, some of the deaths caused by the creature she had chased down had caused showing up like a running body count. There had been five in all, and the satisfaction of knowing there wouldn't be a sixth by morning caused Amy to sink comfortably into her bed, the idea that even though Taylor might be mad at her for going off alone, Amy had still done the right thing, soothing her in a strange way. A month ago, Amy would have been against even following the vampire, not realizing that it existed or the importance of taking it down. She had been too consumed in her own well-being, thinking that school was her priority rather than helping people. Her mother's journal had changed her position on that, especially after discovering that Morgan had left home in Ireland to try to run from the fact that once she was brought in, there was no getting out. The demon had changed Amy's life back in August, had ruined her from ever being that thriving college student ever again, and now it was her duty to balance her two lives while dealing with the weird things the supernatural did to her, something that was going to be evermore daunting to handle.

Shaking away the thought for now, Amy shut off the television just as the weather report came on, displaying nothing but temperatures in the low fifties, and relaxed into her down comforter, the warmth engulfing her as she drifted off to sleep.

* * *

_The sick crunch of metal twisting together in a disgusting screech like nails on a chalkboard cut through Amy's dreams like a knife, echoing throughout the blackness that surrounded her in chilling waves of sound. As she stood in the middle of what appeared to be a rural highway, with nothing but the lines in the road illuminated beneath her, Amy looked around for clues as to where she was or how she got there, no street signs or mile markers or buildings giving her any hints. _

_ Down the motorway, headlights shined brightly on the blacktop, arching as if turning a corner before pointing themselves straight at her, causing her to shut her eyes and flinch as a car barreled toward her with its motor roaring a low rumble. Attempting to move out of the way, Amy's feet felt glued to the pavement as she realized that the vehicle the blaring brights belonged to was coming closer, racing at a speed that was well past a hundred. _

_ A moment later and the sound of metallic crunching came again, the lights disappearing, only to be replaced with the warped frame of an old car in the blink of an eye. All at once, she could move, her body walking toward the automotive's bulk even though she didn't want to near it. Something about it seemed to give off the aura of something being wrong, like a black cloud hovering overhead, with her jaw bunching together as she took in the exaggerated smell of blood, the iron and coppery scent carrying in the cold midnight air._

_ Despite everything that told her not to, Amy reached out to touch the black roof of the automobile, the chilled metal against her fingertips feeling her like ice. For some reason, she felt as though she recognized this car, but couldn't place it. She had seen it before, but she couldn't remember where, only knowing that running her hands atop it now invoked a deep feeling of fear and loss in the pit of her stomach, causing her heart to stop dead in her chest._

_Taking control of herself, Amy wandered around the rest of the vehicle's remains, memorizing every detail of the distorted car and letting her fingers feel the grooves of the bent and dented parts. The passenger's side was warped in a deep U, with the driver's side popping out to make a rounded edge. Every window was broken, most of the black paint on one side was scratched away, and the seats inside the car were dislodged from the impact with whatever had hit it._

_ Heading for the nose, Amy looked at the V-shaped front, its headlights, the same ones that had been heading toward her at breakneck speed, separated by a grill that was stamped with the Chevrolet name toward the left side. A few feet from the car, where she had been standing moments before, the driver's side door was torn off and thrown into the road, the hand-sized dents in the metal giving her the feeling that it hadn't popped off in the wreck but instead been torn away by something else._

_ A shiver running down her spine, Amy removed her fingers from where she had kept them on the vehicle while she inspected it, looking around at the abandoned road as though expecting something to happen. Turning to glance both ways, Amy stepped away from the car, noticing that the farther from it she got, the more it started to fade away._

_ Walking across the highway to the opposite shoulder, everything around her began to brighten to a sunny day, the road still under her feet but bright green grass standing only a few yards away. Directly overhead, the moon and the sun converged, the sky blurring together in a mix of purple and blue as the two worlds met in the middle. Swallowing hard as she stepped away from the rough blacktop, Amy felt the squishing of sod underfoot, its blades long and wild as though she were standing in an old field rather than on someone's front lawn. In the distance, a split-rail fence made a line separating the grass and a rocky plane beyond it, the dense color of the rocks making that area seem overcast._

_ Heading for the divider despite the fact that the place beyond the grass seemed uninviting, and which seemed to get ten feet closer with every step, Amy hurried, feeling a sense of urgency while she walked. As soon as she reached her destination, climbing over to the other side, Amy stood upon the dark gray boulders that made up the ground, peering out at the vastness before her to see the ruins of a castle in the distance, its façade matching the dankness of the stones she was surrounded by. _

_ Getting ready to make a move for the castle, Amy looked down to plan out her path, quickly seeing that she had nothing but increasingly-shrinking rocks to use as a bridge. Beneath her flat platform, where more grass should have sat, nothing but a black abyss sat open underneath, the sound of wind whipping below giving her the idea that if she were to fall, she would fall far, eventually to her death. _

_ "You won't make it, not like that. You can't fight that way," a voice with a deep Irish accent said to her, causing Amy to turn around and nearly slip in the intensity of her about-face. Behind her, a woman with auburn hair and green eyes stared at her, a look of emptiness in her face as she kept her gaze locked on Amy. "You're not ready, but you will be."_


	5. Chapter 3

THREE

Dwight Hall, Yale  
New Haven, Connecticut  
Saturday, November 4, 2006  
7:08 AM

**A**my awoke the next morning with a sense of dread and longing filling her gut, though she couldn't place precisely why. She knew, through grasping at the fog that was her disappearing dream, that she had dreamt something unsettling the night before, her brain unable to remember exactly what as she sat up and stared out at the gray day through the window.

Outside, the sky was deeply overcast, with dark clouds hovering close above the school as though hugging the rooftops of Yale tightly, threatening a downpour as the wind blew around the spires and up into the mist the blocked out the bleak sun. In the air, birds flew in formation as they migrated from the cold shores of Connecticut, searching for warmer pastures elsewhere, their caws loudly heard as they communicated between one another, the noise cutting through the glass panes and into Amy's bedroom.

Getting up from under the covers, Amy neared the sill, looking down at the students milling around on the frosted grass, the tips of the lush lawn colored a pale blue from the rain that had fallen the night before, a silent drizzle that no one had heard. As everyone stood wrapped in coats upon sweaters, the chilly morning blowing their hair off of their faces and staining their noses and cheeks red, small groups hung out in the quad of Old Campus, huddled together for warmth as they met and talked for a short while, disappearing inside one of the heated buildings as soon as the cold became too much.

Feeling the frigid temperature even inside her dorm, Amy pulled the sleeves of her pajamas around her hands and folded her arms over her chest, hunting down the slippers shaped like black bear claws that Jennifer Forester had bought her for her birthday three years ago. Pulling them on and grabbing for her robe, Amy felt the satisfying toastiness they provided, the terrycloth covering her loose fleece night clothes like a second layer of blubber on a seal.

Walking into the living area while she tied her hair up into a loose bun, Amy could see that the window to the common room was open again, the same one from the night before. Looking around for Taylor before shutting it, Amy headed into her friend's room, finding that the girl was sitting up in bed, her laptop on her outstretched legs beneath the covers and a sweater pulled up around her elbows as she typed. Knocking to let Taylor know that she was there, Amy crossed the space between them and sat at the end of the mattress, finding that sheets of paper filled with text had been printed out and discarded on top of the white blankets around her roommate. Grabbing some of them, Amy found that they were nothing more than homework, her friend seeming to be up and finishing her British Literature essay in the early morning hours.

"How long have you been awake?" Amy asked, frowning and putting the pages back.

"Since four," Taylor shrugged, shutting her laptop and putting it aside, pushing heavy layers of bedding away to show that she was also still in her pajamas. "You came in just when I had put the last word. Good timing."

"I'm known for it," Amy joked, smirking as her friend sent her a grin in return.

Gathering her computer and placing it back on the desk, Taylor sighed loudly as she took a seat near the footboard right next to her roommate, slumping her shoulders while obvious exhaustion showed on her face. For the past few weeks, Taylor had been sleeping about as well as Amy had, which had included maybe a couple of hours every other day, but the weight of it was beginning to show on Taylor's face whereas Amy could only sense a distant fatigue about herself. Though last night had been the first time in a long time that she had actually slept the whole night through, it didn't make up for the days on end she had spent awake and around, her mind too focused on the contents of Morgan's journal, research, and squeezing in school assignments to take a break for a few hours of shut-eye.

Taylor, however, had a different reason for being up all hours of the day and night. In the months that her friend had been burning the midnight oil, looking up demons and spirits and whatever else, Taylor had neglected to take time out to finish her homework or study for tests, her teachers threatening to fail her from their classes, the university residency board already threatening that if she didn't pick up her grades, she would have to find somewhere else to stay other than the dorms on campus. Wanting to avoid both of those issues, Taylor had been working in the early mornings before lessons to complete her work, still spending nights looking up the supernatural and wasting ink by printing out articles that she later threw in the trash.

Figuring that her friend could use a break, especially since both of their stomachs were rumbling and the dining hall downstairs had just opened a handful of minutes ago, Amy stood up from where she had been seated, nodding toward the door as she spoke. "You want to go down for breakfast? There's probably a super long line, but I'm sure you're hungry."

"I'm starving," Taylor replied, smiling brightly. "Let me just change first."

"Yeah. Me, too," Amy grinned, turning away and heading back to her room while she slipped off her robe and headed for the closet, immediately taking off her pajamas and exchanging them for a v-neck sweater and jeans. By the time she switched her slippers for Uggs, Taylor was already done, tapping the edge of her school-issued debit card against her knuckles as she waited. Joining her by the door, Amy bit her lip as she pulled on a jacket, Taylor already covered up in a wool coat that was probably too heavy to be wearing inside the heated dorms. "You ready to go?"

Nodding slowly, Taylor lead the way down the hall, pausing for a moment while Amy coaxed her keys out of her pocket and locked the door. By the time they reached the first floor of Dwight Hall, and were pushing their way out into the quad, a line had snaked its way out of the Old Campus canteen across the grass, with most students giving up and heading off toward one of the other dining areas on school grounds. Standing in the back, and beating a crowd of twenty girls from Connecticut Hall by a few seconds, Amy and Taylor stood with their arms wrapped around their chests, shivering in place as the weather barely dipped above thirty degrees.

"I'm surprised it hasn't started snowing yet," Taylor commented as they moved closer to the front of the queue, more people around them ditching out for somewhere else to eat. "Did you hear the rain last night? Good thing we got home before that. I wouldn't want to freeze to death after barely escaping one of… _those things_."

Smirking and rolling her eyes at Taylor's attempt to use a code name for vampires, Amy remained silent until they were finally inside the warmth of the dining hall, the line still moving in a procession around the cafeteria-style setup, tables in the middle of the room separated by the string of people by a few feet as though to give students space while they ate. Grabbing a tray and sliding it on the metal bars near her hips, Amy reached for food at random, knowing that nothing there was exactly gourmet and all tasted the same, but hungry enough not to care. By the time she reached the sophomore sitting at a checkout station taking payment with a barcode scanner that read the back of the student cards they used for meals, Amy's stomach was growling ferociously, making the pile of food on her plate look as though she hadn't gotten enough to eat. Staring at the guy as he lazily readied the red light, Amy waited for the satisfying beep that signaled it had gone through before following Taylor over to a table near the back, choosing a seat across from her friend and setting her cup of coffee down carefully to keep it from spilling.

"I don't think you got enough food," Taylor commented as she looked over the eggs, bacon, hash browns, pancakes, waffles, muffins, and toast Amy had managed to pile onto her tray, whereas the other girl had only taken a bowl of cereal and an orange. "That fight last night must have wore you out. I went into your room when I woke up this morning and you were out like a friggen light. I dropped your psychology book and you didn't even move."

"Yeah, well, voyages with vampires will do that to you," Amy grinned half-heartedly, hoping that her friend wasn't about to start harping on her about leaving Starbucks to follow something much stronger and faster than her all by herself again.

Narrowing her eyes in response, Taylor focused in on her cereal while Amy sipped at her coffee, finding that it tasted different than before, as if someone had burnt it or added dirt into the grounds. Pushing it aside as she started picking at the muffin in front of her, Amy glanced around the dining hall, seeing that the fifty-or-so mahogany tables that stretched across the room were slowly becoming filled to the brim. As a couple sat two people down from Taylor and Amy, their fingers entwined together as they reached across to hold each other's hands, Amy almost sighed in relief, the two sitting close enough to stop Taylor from restarting the conversation that she thought had ended the night before.

Instead, sitting up and leaning forward, resting her elbows against the edge of the table before Amy could take a bite of food, Taylor lowered her voice, looking around conspiratorially prior to speaking. "We need to talk about your party."

Laughing at the way her friend phrased the statement, as though they were about to discuss demons rather than Amy's twenty-first birthday, something she had nearly forgotten about in all the chaos of the last few months, Amy bit back a grin, letting it turn into a scowl when she quickly realized the other girl was probably going to go all-out in terms of throwing some sort of bash. Last year, when Taylor had turned twenty-one, she had invited the whole school into their dorm, the party getting shut down at close to eleven due to the noise and overcrowding. Hopefully, Amy prayed, Taylor wasn't about to try that again.

"What about it?" Amy asked, chewing the inside of her cheek in worry.

"Well, your birthday's on a Tuesday, and Tuesdays are horrible for parties. They're even worse than Wednesdays, but Chase DuPonte doesn't seem to get _that_," Taylor said, slowly smiling as she began to become the Taylor Rosen she had once been back before the mess she had gotten caught up in with the paranormal, the mess that had interrupted the carousing, hair-and-shoe-obsessed, Starbucks socialist she had been.

A year ago, Taylor had been known as the girl everyone went to if they wanted to learn the latest gossip, more interested in dining on the drama of everyone's lives while she went to class and barely passed than focusing on anything as boring as actually studying or paying attention to lectures. Since Rachel Richardson and Celia Brown's death, the first two girls to be killed by the demon possessing Bailey Yost, Taylor had made a complete one-eighty, becoming as anti-social as possible and staying in her dorm room at all hours. At the idea of some sort of birthday shindig for her friend, Amy could see a glimmer of her friend's old personality in the sparkling brown eyes staring at her from across the table.

"What about tonight?" Amy asked, grinning despite the fact that she didn't want anyone in their suite other than her and Taylor. However, with the idea of disappointing her roommate and her excitement to actually do something normal, Amy pushed it aside. "Or Sunday?"

"Tonight's too soon, but tomorrow could work," Taylor said, pausing thoughtfully. "I'll have to post some fliers on MySpace and hope people see them. I can't run the risk of tacking those things anywhere on campus. The RA was so pissed last year, remember? I'm pretty sure she wanted me kicked out of school back then."

Shaking her head and laughing at the memory of Diana Childs, their fourth floor RA from last year who had been the biggest stickler on the planet, a girl who had attempted to put a curfew on the entirety of McClellan Hall that prevented anyone from making noise or leaving their dorms after nine, and her reaction to the party getting thrown that had gotten out of hand, Amy rolled her eyes, recalling that steam had almost come out of Diana's ears the night of Taylor's hootenanny. Across the table, her friend seemed to be equally as amused by the recollection, nearly snorting into her breakfast whenever a particularly funny moment popped into her head, probably the part of the gathering that involved Diana threatening to call campus security on them while wearing bright pink My Little Pony pajamas.

Smiling as she watched her friend laugh, Amy's heart fell for a moment when she remembered that it had been a long time since either of them had actually done so, both of them too worried with abnormal subjects to find anything funny, instead getting caught up and angry at one another for the stupid stunts they pulled—Taylor stealing a car in Willow and Amy heading off to fight a vampire alone. Wondering for a second if this was what they were in for, heartbreaks and upsets and irritation that wouldn't fade, Amy frowned for a minute before shaking the thought away, not wanting to be brought down as the two of them actually interacted like they had in the years before the murders at the beginning of the semester.

Grabbing the muffin she still hadn't bit into, all of her food remaining untouched, Amy tore off the top and nearly swallowed the thing whole, her stomach rumbling now more than ever with an unsated hunger. However, before she could chew it, the taste of the double chocolate chip pastry changed from sweet to bitter in under a second, with Amy imagining a clump of dirt sliding down her throat as she swallowed hard. Gagging as the flavor remained in her mouth, she attempted to chase it down with coffee, the drink containing the same unsavory tang as the muffin.

"You okay?" Taylor asked, looking up and frowning, the smile and glimmer gone.

"I think so," Amy said, holding the muffin out. "Does this taste bad to you?"

"Everything in here tastes bad, Aims," Taylor said, taking a chunk of it and eating it slowly. "Except this. Why did I not know these existed until now?"

"They're nasty today," Amy grimaced, picking up a fork to stab at the hash browns, suddenly weary to keep going as her stomach began to churn uncomfortably. Attempting it anyway, the shredded potatoes went down the same as the muffin, causing Amy to nearly throw up. "Correction: everything's nasty today."

Furrowing her brow in concern, Taylor pursed her lips and reached across the table to place her palm on Amy's forehead, looking like a worried mother fretting over her child. Pulling her hand away as though she had touched a hot stove on accident, Taylor sat down and scowled, her eyes running back and forth over Amy's face as though looking for something outwardly odd about her friend. "You're burning up. I think you caught that flu that's going around."

Slumping her shoulders, Amy chewed her cheek. Having never been sick in her life, not even catching a cold, she didn't want now to be the time she suddenly had a break in her impermeable immune system, especially since her birthday was coming up and, party or not, she didn't want to spend it feeling like she would rather be lying in bed. Having taken care of Thomas and Tristan, her twin brothers, whenever they caught something, Amy knew how horrible even the slightest illness could be, with both of the boys catching the stomach flu one year and staying home from school for a week.

Suddenly, before she could give it any more thought, Amy's torso convulsed forward as bile threatened to rise in her throat, with Amy swallowing it back down to keep from making a scene in the dining hall. Standing up, she raced out into the cold day, Taylor following behind with Amy's purse and offering her shoulder as the two walked back to their dorm. As soon as they reached the inside of Dwight Hall, Amy began to feel as though her body was literally burning up from the inside out, Taylor letting go of Amy the moment the elevator stopped on the top floor, her skin apparently too hot to hold onto.

Opening the door then crossing over to open the windows, Taylor hurried back to help Amy into the living room while Amy's stomach twisted and vomit attempted to eat away at her esophagus. Leaning into the cool cushions of the couch, Amy placed her perspiring forehead against the leather, her intestines pausing their squirming and settling down at the temporary reprieve from heat. However, everything only stayed still for so long as the fire burning her skin rose, turning up the temperature. Getting up and heading for the window, Amy leaned against it while Taylor headed into her bedroom for a second, coming back with a bottle of Theraflu and pouring some of the liquid into the plastic cup that sat on top of the cap. Downing it like a shot, Amy gagged at the bitter taste, noting that everything she attempted to eat that day was dirt-flavored.

"That came on fast," Taylor commented as Amy stripped off her sweater and pulled up the sleeves of her shirt, the cold wind outside pushing past her and lifting the fly-aways of her hair off of her face, drying the sweat that was beading down her temples.

Stepping away from the window for a second to head into her bedroom, Amy changed into shorts and a tank top, feeling her body temperature automatically lower the moment she did so. Cracking the window in her own room, Amy stood there while Taylor crossed over to the kitchen side of their dorm, getting something out of the fridge and returning to Amy's side a second later, a bottle of chilled water in her hand. Thrusting it forward, Taylor watched as Amy twisted the cap, downing half of the contents despite the mud-like tang she had to endure. Setting the bottle in the sill, Amy headed for the bed as her legs began to feel heavy, her back and shoulders aching as though she had been throwing up for hours. Lying down, Amy kicked the covers onto the floor and splayed out, her friend turning on the floor fan in the corner that Amy had placed there after summer and her use for it had ended.

"That medicine will probably knock you out in a few minutes," Taylor said, bustling around the room like a nurse, some nurturing instinct in her unearthed in the last few minutes. Turning to look at her, Amy bunched her jaw as cool air washed over her, still doing nothing to stop the burning heat. In the two years that Amy had known her friend, she had never once seen Taylor act like a fussy mother, almost wanting to laugh now that she realized her friend was more caring than she let on, only stopping when her internal furnace flared up, distracting her from the thought.

Seeming to notice Amy's disbelief, Taylor shrugged her shoulders, heading for the bedroom door. "What? I know how to watch out for people." Letting the subject drop, Amy lay on the bed until Taylor returned with an ice pack, setting it down on her friend's forehead and taking a seat on the side of the mattress opposite the window. "I'm going to go back in my room to work on my paper. Call me if you need anything, okay? Even if it's something like more water. Promise?"

"Okay," Amy sighed, feeling the weight of the bed lift as Taylor got up to walk across the suite, leaving Amy alone to deal with the unprovoked blaze that seemed to light her skin on fire.


	6. Chapter 4

FOUR

Dwight Hall, Yale  
New Haven, Connecticut  
Saturday, November 4, 2006  
11:22 AM

**T**aylor Rosen was worried about Amy, and she had several reasons to do so. First, her friend had decided the night before to go chasing down a vampire while in the middle of a discussion about their sociology class, leaving Taylor to deal with Robin Lister and the girl's air-headed remarks about how she got into Yale on an athletic scholarship and doesn't have to take any social-science classes. Second, Amy hadn't been sleeping, at all, leaving Taylor with the feeling that something was wrong with her roommate, slightly curious over the fact that maybe Amy had some sort of disorder she was too afraid to say anything about. Taylor had read enough about people who had hereditary depression, with symptoms like insomnia and eating less taking precedence, and could easily diagnose her friend as such. However, she had the sense that the sudden onslaught of restlessness, and now the abrupt arrival of the flu, were caused by something else, maybe something as normal as anxiety.

Taylor had first noticed Amy's sleeplessness around the start of mid-terms, her friend staying up all night studying with her notes and highlighted pages due to the fact that she didn't want to fail her classes. Since then, and since midterms had only ended just before Halloween, it was possible that Amy was still feeling the heat all of their professors had put on them to do well. But there were things about her roommate that unsettled Taylor, things she was sure Amy was unaware that she had seen, such as the fact that her friend was stronger than ever, with Amy nearly lifting up the couch without thinking about it the time her pencil had fallen underneath and rolled toward the wall, or moved other pieces of furniture that weighed more than Taylor did with ease, such as the TV cabinet that had swallowed their _Se7en_ DVD.

On top of that, there had been that thing with the stitches and surviving the demon attacks. Despite the fact that the doctor who had sewn Amy up and removed the splints had told both Amy and Taylor that the former should have died from blood loss alone, Amy was still alive and well, the only thing that reminded either of them of the event being the other girl's fading scars. While they had been at the hospital getting the stitches removed, the wounds healing in half the time and stunning even Dr. Guest, Taylor had gotten the feeling that the good doctor knew more than he was letting on, something in his expression telling Taylor as much. Unfortunately, what that was was still a mystery, causing Taylor to fret about her friend despite the fact that she seemed completely normal.

Listening to the strain of bedsprings while Amy turned over in the other room, her roommate groaning every now and again as she dealt with the flu she had probably contracted from not sleeping or eating, Taylor got up to check in on her, the coldness of the bedroom stopping Taylor from entering all the way. Lying with the icepack pressed against her chest, Amy was splayed across the bed, the wind from outside whipping the curtains as the overcast day threatened rain. Leaving as soon as she realized her friend was asleep, her stomach rising and falling every now and again in heavy breaths, Taylor turned away from the archway, heading back to her computer in the other room.

She had been lying when she claimed to be finishing her British Literature paper, instead spending time looking up illnesses that would come on as suddenly as Amy's had. Though she was certain everything about what was going on was normal, Taylor had spent the last couple of months researching demons and witches and werewolves, and doing so had caused her to become more than paranoid about anything that went on between her and Amy. It was possible that someone had cursed her friend, or that she had eaten something that was magically poisonous, or any number of things that were options when it came to the supernatural. Though she didn't know where to start looking, Taylor had begun to search online through various sites, contacting her web informant, A, for help but never getting a reply back.

"Taylor? Are you still here?"

Getting up from the chair she had just sat down in, Taylor crossed the suite to stand in Amy's doorway, noticing that her friend was now wrapped under piles of blankets, hidden underneath them like an Eskimo in an igloo. Heading for the head of the bed, Taylor looked down to see Amy's teeth chattering underneath the heap of covers, the ice pack discarded on the floor and leaving a small puddle of water around it.

"You alright?" Taylor frowned, her concern growing.

"Can you shut the windows?" Amy asked, her voice sounding small and muffled beneath the quilts she was concealed under. Nodding and doing so, the curtains fell limply back in place as the air stopped flowing, the room automatically warming up as the automatic heater that toasted Dwight Hall set to work on the frigid air. Poking her head out from underneath, Amy sent Taylor a half-smile, her face showing the same worry that Taylor was sure was written on her own. "Thank you."

"No problem," Taylor said, getting ready to leave but pausing in the doorway. "Hey, so, how sick are you, anyway? Like, does your throat hurt or your head or what?"

"I don't know," Amy answered, the mound of blankets appearing to be talking to her from where Taylor stood. "I was just really hot then really cold. It happened in about half a second. I feel fine otherwise. Except sometimes my stomach tries to kick out everything I've ever eaten in my life."

"Okay," Taylor replied, pursing her lips and nodding, turning to go and keeping the door open in case her friend called out to her again.

Nearing her computer, Taylor sat down once more and opened her AOL browser, checking for mail from A and finding nothing. Starting a new tab to search Google for the fifth time since this morning, Taylor typed "sudden hot and sudden cold" into the bar, hitting enter and scanning the results. Finding that everything was normal from what she could see, and that most people had the same problem, calling them fever chills, Taylor sat back in her chair and closed the window, giving up on the endeavor and becoming certain that she was worrying for nothing. Amy was totally fine, just sick. Though that was disappointing news to Taylor, who had wanted to throw her friend a twenty-first birthday party, she had accepted the letdown in hour one of Amy's hot flashes.

Opening a new window, Taylor logged into MySpace, endlessly reading the bulletin posts on the side of the page and clicking open each one to see if any of her five-hundred-plus friends had uploaded anything interesting. Finding the same evasive updates about girls' relationship problems or song lyrics that had leaked from the new Bad Religion album, not that she would ever listen to it, Taylor shut down the computer, running out of things to do after spending what felt like a year online.

Leaving her room and heading for the kitchenette on the other side of the dorm, Taylor opened the fridge to find nothing but a few cans of Pepsi and half a gallon of milk. Though both girls usually ate out, or went to the dining hall whenever they wanted food, Taylor was feeling strangely anxious, wanting something to snack on to get rid of her nerves. Deciding that her best course of action, other than sitting around biting her nails as she waited for Amy to feel better, would be to head to the store, Taylor crossed over to the front door, grabbing her purse and wallet and checking on her friend before leaving, shutting the door quietly in case Amy was asleep.

* * *

Shivering under the covers, Amy wrapped her arms tighter around her chest, curling into a ball beneath the heaps of blankets covering her from the cold. She was worried, scared, and restless, her entire body wanting to get up and walk around, while the rest of her wanted to stay where she was and fight off whatever had taken a hold of her.

Entangling herself deeper under the covers, Amy listened while Taylor left their suite, probably heading off somewhere, the idea of having to keep watch on her friend probably making her bored. Amy didn't blame Taylor for wanting to leave. Had it been any other day, she doubted her roommate would have remained where she was, normally getting up to head to the library or deliver her late papers to her professor's boxes down at the school's front office around this time. Since being given the news that if she didn't make up the work she missed, she would be kicked out of her classes, Taylor had gone down to the front of the university to messenger the delayed assignments almost every weekend, attempting to make up everything she had neglected to do while she became enveloped in hunting and research and remaining holed up in her room.

Turning her thoughts away from Taylor, Amy focused on her freezing, not wanting to but too concerned about it to ignore the fact that she was quivering with cold from the inside out. Before it had been heat, heat that threatened to burn her alive as she tried to find a cool spot somewhere in the room, and instead becoming resigned to the bed as the flames inside became too much. She had sweat about her whole weight in water—most of it getting dried up in the cool air that came in through the windows, the same cool air that did nothing to lower her body temperature—and had felt weakened by the warmth, unable to stand up or stay awake for longer than a few minutes. With the cold, she felt over-energized and fully alert, everything around her alluring her to get out of bed, though the sub-zero frigidness caused her to want to remain under the covers, rolled up like a sleeping cat as she waited for it to pass.

For some reason, something about her felt wrong, felt changed. It was as though she was undergoing some sort of metamorphosis, something where she had to endure the alterations step-by-step before she was finished. As hot and cold fought one another, along with consciousness and sleep, it was as though her body was in the middle of a tug-of-war, one side winning more than the other, the chilliness seeming more intense than the heat as her frozen fingers wrapped around the blankets surrounding her.

Letting out a deep sigh while her stomach squirmed for what she was sure to be the fiftieth time since she had left the dining hall, Amy tried to ignore the feeling at the same time as she wondered whether or not the sensation was trying to act as some kind of warning device, something she wasn't paying attention to but should. The last time it had happened, aside from the night before, it had been because of a demon. Was her gut instinct trying to tell her that one was nearby? Or was it something else? Something equally frightening like that vampire turned out to be? Something she was trying to guess the meaning of but wasn't narrowing in on.

Then again, she reminded herself, whatever she felt last night had been different, as though there were two diverse signals between vampires and demons. While it was possible that those two creatures fell under the same category and her sensor was broken, Amy wasn't so certain. Last night, the feeling had been a tickle rather than a squirm, as though her intestines were telling her that vampires were low-level threats in comparison, though still dangerous, and unless she was interpreting it wrong, then this was something else, something a different kind of unsettling and bothersome.

All of a sudden, a feeling of heat flared up in Amy's core, immediately taking her over as she kicked off her covers and got up to open the windows, standing near the sill for a few moments before she could no longer keep herself upright. Perspiration immediately began beading on her forehead as she took a seat on the bed, the cold, forty-degree November air doing nothing more to cool her than the blankets had done to warm her.

Reaching for the Theraflu Taylor had left on the nightstand, Amy poured a cup-full into the small plastic one balancing on top of the cap, downing it quickly like before and nearly gagging as her stomach attempted to reject the medicine. True to her friend's word, she would be out like a light in a few minutes, only to awaken a short time later due to the extreme heat stirring her; but some sleep was better than no sleep, especially since it killed time until whatever this was started to pass for good. Though she didn't know what it was or when it was likely to fade away, Amy had the sense that this temporary hell would be over soon—how soon, however, she didn't know, as long as it passed quickly.

Sitting up in bed and resting her back against the headboard, Amy let out a long breath, the medicine already taking effect, as though the warmth inside her was incubating the part of it that caused immediate sleep. As she shut her eyes, becoming oblivious to the world, Amy could vaguely sense an abnormal presence out in the hall, the Theraflu making her too exhausted to get up and investigate, and unable to care longer than the few seconds that it was there to focus in on it. Within a heartbeat, Amy was out, the sense of someone lurking in the corridor to become nothing more than a forgotten memory by the time she would wake up.


	7. Chapter 5

FIVE

Dwight Hall, Yale  
New Haven, Connecticut  
Sunday, November 5, 2006  
3:31 AM

**A**my awoke in the middle of the night in searing pain, feeling as if her body was being pricked with thousands of finely-sharpened needles, each point embedded in every pore of her skin and causing every movement to hurt. The sheets around her felt like sandpaper and the cold air wafting in through the windows felt like ice being dumped on her flesh, every fiber of her being shaking with agony whenever she breathed.

Opening her eyes and attempting to lay completely still, Amy could see that everything around her seemed to be colored a smoky shade of gray, the blackness that the shut curtains provided appearing as though it had been lightened. Around her, the bedroom stared back at her as if she were looking at it through a brightness filter. In her modified vision, she could see nearly every detail of the surrounding space in a hazy steel color, everything tinted the same hue and sharpened, the things she normally wouldn't be able to see from across the room, even in daylight, appearing finely focused, as if she were wearing special glasses that made everything appear as different as it was.

In her ears, the ticking of her clock reverberated inside her head like a heavy monotonous drum, causing a pounding headache to go along with the extreme tenderness of her skin. As the thumping continued, everything else seemed louder as well, the floor fan that Taylor had turned on hours ago buzzing like a hundred thousand bees and the refrigerator all the way in the kitchen humming equally as loud as the old appliance did its job. Occasionally, the squeal of metal springs cut through everything like nails on a chalkboard as Taylor turned over in the other room, probably sleeping on the couch judging by how close the sound had been.

At the instant everything hit her, right before she had awoken, Amy had wanted to scream, the pain of her skin becoming unbearable after only seconds of being awake, coupled with her other two senses working overdrive. As she tried to hold it in, the squeal of her own muffled yelping reaching her ears like the crash of steel twisting together, Amy felt tears sting her eyes, the hot heat of them burning her face in fiery streams. Holding in her breath to try to keep from crying out, Amy kept everything trapped inside her throat as something else began to wash over her, the smell of everything contained within the apartment-like suite reaching her nose and causing her to want to vomit as the nearly-sour milk in the fridge, Taylor's coconut shampoo, and the smell of dirty clothes mixed together in a way that churned her stomach.

Sitting up despite the agony it caused, Amy pushed her back against the headboard of the bed and rolled her shoulders up into the carved wood behind her. As she felt everything around her, from the breeze, to her hair tickling her as it fell out of its bun, to the shuffling of her clothes as she tried to straighten her legs into a comfortable position—a fruitless effort considering everything hurt no matter what she did—Amy gnashed her teeth together as bile threatened to rise in her throat, the smell, feel, noise, and unusual brightness of everything coming together to both scare her and sicken her in a way she hadn't thought possible.

Leaning back and trying to ignore the pain, Amy attempted to keep her mind on something else, _anything_ else. Instead, she became fixated on whatever was going on, certain now that this wasn't just the average flu like she had originally thought. Though the hot and cold sweats she had undergone could be perceived as normal, especially since she had seen others who had been ill experiencing the same thing, this… whatever _this_ was, was not normal. It was as though at least four of her five senses had been heightened to an unusual level, all coming together to overpower her as she lay in bed, attempting to keep from leaning over the side and barfing onto the floor.

Part of her wanted to call out for help, while another part of her told her to stay quiet, that this was something no one could fix and something she had to endure alone. As a voice in the back of her head that sounded like her own spoke, Amy listened as it told her to stay still and breathe slowly, that the pain will pass as the fever chills had hours ago. Heeding its advice, Amy attempted to remain in one place, everything hurting so much that she wanted to crawl into a ball and cry.

As long, grueling moments passed, Amy glanced at the clock every now and again, the neon numbers on the digital face nearly blinding her. From what she could tell, it had only been three minutes since she had woken up, every second of it seeming like years as the pins in her pores deepened themselves into her skin. In the living room, Amy could hear Taylor get up from the couch and walk into her bedroom, her bare feet on the wood sounding like a combination of clapping and thumping as she shuffled heavy-footed and half asleep through the archway across the suite. At the click of the door shutting loudly, Amy winced, the noise hurting her ears.

All of a sudden, a sharp sting ripped through Amy's body as she buckled, her back arching against the headboard while her skin felt as though it was on fire, every piece of flesh feeling as if it was melting off the bone. Screaming without wanting to, Amy felt agonized tears roll down her cheeks while flames like whips hit every part of her—her back, head, arms, legs, and chest burning in a way dissimilar to the hot flashes she had experienced before. Within seconds, Taylor was in her room, flicking on the light and causing Amy to cry out again, the brightness becoming blinding in her altered vision.

"Amy, Amy! What's wrong?" Taylor shouted over the sounds of the screaming, causing Amy to clap her hands over her ears from the volume and shut her eyes tightly underneath the light. "Amy, please talk to me! What's wrong!"

"Everything _hurts_…"

Unable to answer her more than that, Amy did all she could and folded in on herself, her knees coming up close to her face while her elbows rested on her thighs, the brush of skin against skin feeling like sandpaper rubbing together. Letting the tears flow, unable to care that she was sure everything she was doing was embarrassing, Amy's chest heaved from where she was lying on her side, breathing heavily through her mouth to keep the smell of curdled milk, coconut, and old laundry from entering her nose. After a long moment, she couldn't keep herself together, everything exploding in fresh waves as the heat got hotter, the lights got brighter, the sounds got louder, and the smells became more intense. Getting up and rushing for the bathroom, Amy's stomach nearly gave way before she made it, throwing up the toilet seat and vomiting the gallons of water she had drank during the day, using it as a substitute for the food that didn't seem to want to go down.

"I'm going to call a doctor," Taylor said in between Amy's heaving, causing Amy to stop to hold up a hand as a warning to her friend that that wouldn't be a good idea.

"Don't. I don't think this is nor—"

Before she could finish her sentence, more bile came, burning her mouth and throat as the stomach-acid-and-water combination forced itself back up in heavy doses, causing Amy's shoulders to throb as her muscles became sore from the repeated motion. Across the room, the sound of pages flipping while Taylor searched for something in one of the old books she had discarded weeks ago carried through the air to Amy's bionic ears, the crinkling as loud as a chip bag, even in the distance between them.

After what felt like hours, Amy could feel her stomach stop churning, her body easing its way away from pain as the cold floor beneath her no longer felt like a bucket of ice water but instead the usual cool laminate. Leaning against the wall across from the toilet, Amy listened to it flush, closing her eyes as her vision shifted back to normal, her other senses following suit. Finally taking a chance to look around, Amy sat up and squinted into the blackness of the bathroom, seeing Taylor's frame in the doorway with the lamp from the living area casting a shadow on her face. In her expression, something grim was written in her knitted eyebrows, the book in her hands held open as though it contained something she didn't want to read.

"Are you okay?" Taylor asked slowly, turning on the bathroom light.

Blinking at the sudden illumination, Amy shook her head, swallowing back the taste of bile that didn't seem to want to leave her mouth. "Something's wrong with me. I don't know what it is. That… that wasn't normal."

Shaking her head despite the knowing expression on her face, Taylor shrugged, placing the book on the sink and bending down to help Amy to her feet, both of them hobbling back into Amy's room and taking a seat on the bed. Though her head still pounded and shoulders ached, everything else felt ordinary, the rest of her seeming completely fine, as though the last half an hour spent in unprovoked agony hadn't happened, as though it had been part of her imagination.

As the two remained side by side in the thoughtful quiet, Taylor stared out at the dark curtains, the occasional moonlight shining through to show her pensive expression. As her button nose and narrow eyes wrinkled together in a sour appearance, giving her a look of disgust as though she too had been able to smell the rancid combination her friend had had to ignore minutes ago, Taylor kept her gaze forward, not looking at Amy no matter how many times the other girl's eyes fell on her.

If she had to guess, Amy would bet any amount of money that Taylor had found something in that book she was looking through, the haunted glint in her stare visible the second Amy had seen her friend in the doorway. Wondering what it could be, Amy wanted to get up and see, curious as to whether or not Taylor would try to stop her from doing so. But as she moved to stand, Amy nearly collapsed on the floor as all of her strength ebbed away from her, the vomiting seeming to take every ounce of energy she had and washing it down the drain. Instead, she pretended to sit further back on the bed, her hands shaking violently as she used them to move herself backwards.

"Taylor," Amy began, her voice shaking as much as her extremities. "What…"

Ultimately, she didn't know how to continue, something in the back of her mind telling her to keep her mouth shut, that she didn't what to know what her friend had found and that she should remain blissful for just a little while longer. Wrapping her legs up into her chest while she sat on top of the sheet-less mattress, Amy bowed her head and rested her chin against her knee, staring out at the billowing curtains in the slight breeze just like Taylor was beside her, trying to keep the questions from flowing in an endless wave.

Unfortunately, her mind didn't want to seem to shut down now that it was on overdrive, her senses returned to normal but her brain still on high alert. Next to her, doing the same thing, Taylor appeared to be milling something over in her head, something heavy that had to be dealt with with caution. What was going on? What was wrong with her? What did Taylor _know_, and why wasn't she sharing? Was it truly that bad?

Sighing deeply as frightened tears threatened to fall, the second set that had overcome her so far tonight, Amy tried to keep her breathing steady as she closed her eyes, water leaking from the cracks and trailing down her cheeks. Not bothering to wipe them away, she remained where she sat, letting the blackness suffocate her as her heart pounded and shivers ran down her spine. For some reason, she knew that whatever Taylor was eventually going to tell her was bad, worse than any horrible news her friend had ever had to break, even trumping the time Taylor had told Amy that Rachel Richardson had died on that night at the end of August. Back then, however, the girl's expression hadn't even been remotely as foreboding as it was now, sadness taking over then whereas fear seemed to be the predominate emotion in the present, fear that both of them shared, though Taylor's appeared strangely deeper.

For a moment, Amy turned her thoughts away from her roommate, instead focusing in on herself. Though she was afraid of Taylor's news, whatever it was, she was also afraid of the truth of it, sensing changes about herself that she couldn't explain. Though she knew her friend was scared, it was almost as though Amy could _feel _the dread in her gut as well see it on the other girl's face. There was a vibe around Taylor that carried the bleak emotion, the sense not as strong as it should be but still there, feeling like a feather in Amy's stomach, floating around and lightly tickling the lining.

"Amy," Taylor said finally, barely opening her mouth as she spoke, her shoulders hunching forward as though the weight of the conversation was too much for her, "when you were fighting that vampire, or when I killed it, did it get any blood on you?"

Bunching her jaw at the obvious question, especially since both girls had seen how completely drenched Amy had been after Taylor had cut off the creature's head, Amy narrowed her eyes instead of answering, curiosity deep in her expression as her friend turned to face her, her skin pale and translucent as though all the color had been washed out of it by the thought of what came next. Speaking heavily, Taylor pursed her lips together, her eyes filling with tears just like Amy's had a moment before. Opening her mouth to ask what was wrong, Amy bit it back as Taylor whispered the next question, the answer as to what was happening written all over her face.

"Did you get any in your _mouth_?"


	8. Chapter 6

SIX

Dwight Hall, Yale  
New Haven, Connecticut  
Sunday, November 5, 2006  
9:58 AM

**T**aylor paced the length of the living room, uncertain of what to do. Her friend was a vampire. Her best friend, in the whole wide world, was a vampire. Something about that seemed so surreal and unbelievable, but it had been staring her right in the face. She had seen the signs and symptoms—Amy had claimed everything she ate taste bad, had undergone the bodily changes, and had nearly puked her guts out as her stomach rejected the human food that was sitting in it—but Taylor hadn't wanted to believe it. Even now, as Amy slept in her bedroom, the curtains pulled tight to keep out the unfittingly bright daylight, Taylor was having a hard time swallowing that pill.

After asking her roommate The Question, something that had taken all of her inner strength to do so, Taylor had walked the area of Amy's bedroom while her friend had stared up at her in dismay, either unsure of how to answer or unable to grasp the concept of what was happening. It had taken ten minutes for the girl to do more than gaze blankly forward, ten long minutes that felt like days, with neither of them satisfied with what had been said, the simple "I don't know" seeming to ring throughout the room with absolutely no truth to it. Taylor had already known the answer to the question before she had even asked, seeing what she had wanted to know with her own two eyes the night before. Amy had been covered with blood the moment the vampire she had been fighting had been decapitated above her, the scarlet spray covering her like rain that fell in big curtains of red. Too stunned to notice that she was soaking in hemoglobin, Amy had watched the creature fall over dead, wiping her hands over her face as liquid fell into her eyes, spitting out a mouthful and gagging on the coppery tang.

All it took was one drop, no matter how diluted it was, to infect a person. Though Amy may have coughed up whatever had passed her lips, she hadn't gotten all of it, some of the poison probably entering her bloodstream before either of them had realized it. At the time, Taylor hadn't known the effects of what her friend had done, thinking that in order for a person to be turned, they had to have been bitten like in the movies and television shows she had seen in her past twenty-one years. But it seemed as though this mutagen worked much in the way of some viruses, having to be passed through fluids in order to be contracted. In the books she read, the ones that said that other than access through the mouth, if the blood got into cuts or eyes, the person was done for, Taylor had seen the shift from human to vampire explained, the pain that came with it something horrible. And she had seen Amy ingest the toxin, meaning that there was no doubting that the sudden agony and fever her friend had been experiencing was anything else except for the changes brought on by vamperism.

Because of that, Amy Winchester was going to have to be killed.

Pacing the floor much like she had been for the past few hours, Taylor had been trying to think of a humane way to waste her friend, finding that every time she thought about it, her hands shook uncontrollably. She didn't want to be the one to kill Amy, but as soon as this thing took hold of the other girl, it was going to be one or the other. In the back of her mind, Taylor knew she couldn't live with herself if she allowed her roommate to walk around like that, taking innocent human lives in order to continue living a monstrous existence. That would be blood on Taylor's hands, especially since she had been the one showboating down at the lumber yard, the one who had made a point by being dramatic and going to extremes. Maybe if she had been more careful, had waited until the vampire had moved away from Amy to lop off its head, they wouldn't now be in this mess. Instead, Taylor had wanted to let her presence be known, to send a message to the other girl that if she was going to be Hunting, they were going to do it together rather than apart. Amy had nearly been killed by the thing, but even after saving her, Taylor had doomed her friend to an eternity that was worse than death.

Stopping near the couch pushed against the wall of the living room, Taylor buckled in half as everything became too much, sitting down on the couch as white hot tears of anger and remorse flowed down her cheeks, a fit of self-loathing coming over her that made her want to jump out the window directly to her right. This, all of this, was Taylor's fault, from the fact that Amy was hunting to the fact that her friend was now the exact thing they sought out and slaughtered. Maybe if she hadn't been so adamant that Amy work jobs beside her, maybe if she hadn't pushed the other girl into being something she obviously didn't want to be, then she wouldn't have to die before she could even legally drink. But Taylor had kept shoving her friend into a life she didn't want to live, guilt tripping Amy into doing things she didn't want to do, and eventually dooming her in the worst way possible. Taylor had murdered her friend, just like the demon had murdered her other friends. Now she was destined to be alone at Yale, just her and her empty suite, everyone she had ever loved, aside from her family, dwelling six feet under all because each of them had been pushed in a direction they didn't want to go.

Sobbing hard, Taylor's body rocked on the couch while she wrapped her arms around her stomach, everything seeming so out of control that she could no longer keep herself together. What was she going to do now? How was she supposed to function without Amy? Sweet, quiet, reserved, studious Amy? If it hadn't been for her, Taylor would have fallen apart a long time ago, probably falling into a pit of depression after Celia and Rachel had been killed. But Amy had stayed with her to make sure she was okay, offering to do her homework for her and sleeping in the room beside hers to make sure her friend was at least a little bit better than bad. In return, Taylor had murdered her in cold blood, literally, and was going to have to do it again as soon as Amy woke up from her daytime nap.

Letting the tears flow, Taylor sank into the couch and curled up into a ball, unable to do anything more than that. In the hours that followed the realization of what Amy was becoming, Taylor had remained stationed behind both her computer and a stack of books, looking for a way around her conclusion, the deduction she had come to after she remembered reading something about the violent changes vampires underwent after being turned. Though the book said the alterations were quick, though still painful and were likely to vary from person to person, Taylor had assumed that Amy's took longer because her system was fighting it, whatever Hunter blood she had in her kicking and punching to escape the fate that was taking hold. As she had watched Amy burn, freeze, and scream her way through the adaptations her body had been molding into, Taylor could see every stage in the transmutation take effect, something in Amy's soft stare hardened in a way that unsettled her, as though her friend had gained ten years of long nights, hard days, and rough conditions, seeming to add a sageness to her gaze that matched the color of her eyes.

However, the worst of it was yet to come. With each and every vampire, directly after the metamorphosis was finished, there was a hunger that kicked in, a ravishing famine that caused them to kill anything and everything that moved. As soon as Amy was up and around, Taylor was going to be her target for a meal, whatever humanity she had in her swallowed by the overwhelming appetite that needed to be sated. In that time and until then, Taylor was going to have to be on guard and prepared, the machete she had used to kill the last vampire sitting underneath the couch, hidden from view but still reachable at a moment's notice. She had placed it there the minute she had given up looking for a way to save her friend, nothing in any book or webpage telling her how to de-vamp a vamp.

Thankfully, as for now, Amy was quietly situated behind closed doors, sleeping her way through daylight just like every other bloodsucker that had been written into pop culture, and giving Taylor time to herself before the battle between the two of them went down. She knew, as soon as it began, Taylor was going to want it over, probably giving up right at the start because the idea of killing her friend was too painful to actually execute. Because of that, she would become Amy's first Happy Meal, the first of many, all because Taylor would be too weak to do the right thing, instead sparing herself the guilt and shame that would weigh on her for the rest of her life by surrendering right off.

Unfortunately, it wasn't long before Taylor's pre-grieving period was interrupted, the door to Amy's bedroom cracking open to reveal her friend standing in her pink and gray hearts and stars pajamas, rubbing her eyes and appearing like a little girl who had just woken up from her nap. For the most part, the color was drained out of Amy's body, the malnutrition from the not-eating-and-vomiting combination coming together to wash out all the pigmentation of her skin. Underneath her chestnut hair and popping green gaze, Amy looked positively pale and much thinner than usual, her pajamas hanging off of her frame much looser than they normally did.

As she approached, Taylor stayed poised to reach her weapon under the couch, noticing that Amy didn't go straight for her, but rather for the kitchen, avoiding the sunlight spilling into their dorm through the unfiltered windows. Opening the refrigerator, every cabinet and drawer, then checking in the pantry, Amy turned to eye Taylor when she found nothing that seemed appetizing, frowning deeply and tilting her head in confusion at her friend's bent-forward stance, Taylor's fingers reaching toward the floor while she remained sitting on the sofa. Smirking grimly in sad amusement, Amy slumped her shoulders, leaning against the countertop across the room, her body language giving the clear message that she was keeping her distance to protect the other girl from the dangerous creature she knew she was. Biting her lip and nodding curtly, Taylor sat up straight on the couch, wondering half-heartedly how Amy was feeling, part of her telling herself not to care while the other part couldn't help it.

Before she could ask, however, Amy's torso began to shudder as her hands went straight for her face, Amy's body bending forward at the waist as deep, heavy sobs began to erupt from inside of her, shaking her entire frame like she was taking multiple hits to the back. From across the room, the sound of the crying reached Taylor's ears, causing her insides to shrivel up with sadness, her whole being wanting to get up to comfort her friend but too afraid of her now that she was compromised. Instead, Taylor just watched as the other girl sank to the ground, her shoulder blades resting against the fridge as she kept her head ducked beneath her arms, her knees pulled up to create a cavern for her tears to fall.

Only once before had Taylor seen Amy honestly cry, and that had been only a few months ago after everything that had happened on campus. When the initial shock had worn off, and after she had settled into the dorm the two now shared in Dwight Hall, Amy had cried for hours, the overwhelming sense of everything that had happened at the beginning of the school year finally getting to her one night weeks after the remembrance ceremony for their dead friends. They had been watching TV in the living room when suddenly the fit had struck, her friend curling up in a ball much like she was now and crying her way through the night. In the middle of it, Taylor had started, too, something about Amy's raw emotions, something that almost never came to light, flicking the switch on her tear ducts as well.

In the time that Taylor had known her, Amy Winchester had never been one to share anything that bothered her or anything that might be on her mind. Though Taylor had seen the girl be caring, kind, sympathetic, and thoughtful, she could only count on her hand the number of times Amy had actually spoken out about anything that upset her, the girl always claiming to be alright even though when it was clearly visible that she wasn't. However, Taylor had a feeling that, now that she was about to die, Amy was throwing that to the wind, instead letting it be known that she was scared, sad, and remorseful about what was happening, that everything was getting to her and she didn't care who knew it.

Getting up to cross the room, Taylor no longer thought about what might happen between them now that Amy was formerly human, seeing nothing but humanity in her friend's expression. Sitting down beside her and wrapping her arms around the other girl's shoulders, Taylor leaned her head against Amy's while she cried, Taylor occasionally feeling tears trickle down her own cheeks whenever the thought appeared in her head that this was going to be the last moment that they had together before the end, soaking in the silence of the room that was only punctuated by Amy's sobs. Soon, maybe after dark or maybe in a few minutes, Suite 7 of Dwight Hall was about to become a battle zone before one of them inherited it for good, the belongings of whoever passed on to become untouched and deserted, just as their body would be after the final blow was delivered.

Then again, after tonight, the suite might become a ghost town in itself, depending on the outcome of the fight between them that seemed imminent. Though she didn't want to be pessimistic, an though neither girl was hedging their bets against one another, Taylor knew that as soon as that need for food took over, it would become anyone's game. With Amy's advanced vampire strength and Taylor's prowess with a machete—having been using one for years in the woods her parents owned on the back lot of their home in Cicero—it was possible that neither of them would come out alive, or the fight would result in a survivor that would only go on to do more harm than good. Taylor counting on her own victory would be a hindrance when the time finally came. She didn't know who was more likely to carry on after the battle, and assuming might threaten her chances of her being the champion.

"I'm so hungry," Amy muttered, sniffling just as her stomach rumbled loudly.

Stiffening at the words, Taylor got ready to get up, freezing instead when the sound of someone knocking on the door echoed throughout the room. Exchanging a glance with her friend as though secretly asking whether or not she was expecting someone, Taylor jumped to her feet, heading for the threshold and wiping her eyes, the tears refusing to stop flowing in spite of everything, staining her cheeks and blurring her eyes as she walked.

Reaching for the knob, Taylor neglected looking through the peep hole, instead opening the door to see who was there. Furrowing her brow as soon as she saw their visitor, her first thought was that the man had stumbled upon the wrong dorm, the old, stubby, grungy man glancing down at her as though he were searching for signs of recognition in her face. Looking him up and down, Taylor could see that he was dressed in a flannel shirt on top of a gray Henley, tattered and grease-stained jeans frayed over black boots that had obviously seen better days. On his head, a dirty blue-and-white trucker's hat read "Death Valley Rebel" on the face that was covered with grime and dried sweat, causing Taylor to frown. It was clear someone on their floor had called for a tow and the driver had gotten the rooms mixed up, knocking on theirs instead and breaking up one of the last moments Taylor was going to have with her friend before the end of one, or both, of them came.

"Can I help you with something?" Taylor asked, sighing loudly.

"Yeah," the man said, his voice gruff and hinted with a Southern accent, "I'm lookin' for Amelia Winchester. She home?"

From behind her, Taylor could sense Amy's presence, the sound of her bare feet padding against the wood flooring causing Taylor to step away from the door as Amy came over to her left side. Glancing the man up and down, Taylor could see that her friend was just as bewildered by the man's presence as she was, her lips pursing together in confusion while she knitted her brows. "Hi. I'm, uh, I'm Amy. Can I help you?"

"I'm Bobby Singer," the man said with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, "I'm a friend of your dad's. You mind if I come in?"


	9. Chapter 7

SEVEN

Dwight Hall, Yale  
New Haven, Connecticut  
Sunday, November 5, 2006  
10:44 AM

**B**obby could tell by the heavy look on the girls' faces that he had interrupted something, both John's daughter and her roommate shiny and pink with tears. It was possible that the two already knew the news he was there to deliver, the hours he had driven being for naught, but judging by the way the two were standing feet away from one another, he had a feeling that wasn't the case, a tension growing in the room that couldn't be cut with a knife.

It had been a long trip from Sioux Falls, South Dakota to New Haven, Connecticut, each step of the way spent deciding the right words to say to tell the girl the bad news about John and his unfortunate, and questionable, demise. While Bobby didn't know Amelia Winchester from Eve, he still knew that there was a right way and a wrong way to deliver the upsetting information that a parent had died, though it was usually easier when the child of the person knew that their parent was a Hunter. Bobby never liked skirting around facts, meaning that getting straight to the point was always preferable, something he couldn't do when the kid was uninformed.

However, just like Sam who had given him the job as messenger, Bobby had no idea whether or not John had told his youngest kid the truth about himself, Sam telling him that the man had the girl under the impression that he worked for the FBI rather than killed supernatural beings for a living, probably keeping up the ruse up until his dying day. It would be just like John to do that, to keep his kids miles from the truth, leaving Bobby with no doubt in his mind that Amelia was still out of the loop and in the dark. Thankfully, before he had arrived at where she went to school, Bobby had managed to think up two different tales of John's demise—the real story and one that involved him getting gunned down on the job.

Back home, Sam and Dean had arrived on his doorstep only an hour after the hospital had pronounced their father dead, the weight of it hunching their shoulders and written all over their faces. Bobby hadn't needed to ask to know why John wasn't there or why they had stolen a car to get to his front door, instead giving them time and space to mill it over and deal. While Dean worked in the junk yard taking up most of Bobby's lot, pounding and drilling away at the Impala as he worked to restore the car that had been totaled the night of the accident that had sent all three Winchester men to the hospital, Sam moped around the house, keeping his head buried in books and newspapers as though reading was going to distract him from the loss he had taken.

It had been only a day before Sam had opened up about what had happened, giving Bobby every detail up until the moment he had found John passed out on the floor of his room. After "calling it", the nurses had been brusque and had ushered them out of the hospital, giving them pamphlets for funeral homes to call and urging them to make the arrangements quick. As he talked, Bobby could tell that Sam was trying to go over the details with a fine-tooth comb, telling his friend as much as telling himself that something in the story wasn't right. John had been fine just before dropping dead, the doctors ruling it a cardiac arrest despite the fact that the man had been in almost perfect physical condition. Even at fifty-one, Bobby doubted John would have been taken down by heart problems, the guy as tough as an ox and as stubborn as a mule.

Still, even as Sam outwardly discussed the trouble he was having accepting the doctor's diagnosis, Bobby had kept his mouth shut, figuring there would be a better time later to talk over the details of John's death, now not being the best opportunity, especially since the wound was so fresh and they had only burned the body the night before—Bobby calling a friend who worked at a nearby mortuary and asking him to deliver it before dark. Instead, he had asked if there was anything he could do, hoping that a beer or pizza run might help calm Sam down, the boy obviously becoming worked up as he tried to nit-pick at the details that wouldn't fit together in his head.

Thinking that maybe Sam wanted some time alone, Bobby had frowned and leaned back in his chair as the kid stood up, taking a step away from the table and digging his hands into his jeans. Assuming that Sam was going to turn around and head into the living room, Bobby had slid his chair back just as he looked up at the much younger man, seeing that Sam was threading something delicate out of his pocket. A second later and a silver necklace was placed on the table between them, Sam retaking his seat as he pushed a sterling-and-diamond crucifix in front of the older man, sighing heavily as he did so.

"There's this… _girl_," Sam had said, his voice thick as he spoke, as though tears were threatening to break through, his posture bent forward with the weight of what he was saying. "I only met her once, but Dad said she was his-his daughter, and I think she should know. But I can't… Dean would kill me if I called, and with the Impala broken—"

"It's alright, son," Bobby had said, getting the gist of what Sam was asking.

Within minutes, Bobby had been out the door, giving Dean and his questioning look a vague response as to where he was headed, Sam's printed-out pages folded in his shirt's front pocket and keys in his hand. As he headed for the interstate, Bobby had begun milling ideas over in his head, knowing it would have been simpler to pick up the phone, but also understanding that handling these types of things involved a certain amount of finesse that required a face-to-face conversation. For hours, he had driven without stopping, rolling through Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio on nothing but coffee and persistence. If he timed it right, he would be in New Haven by Sunday morning, the twenty-four hour drive being kicked up to seventeen if he pushed the speed limit a little more than usual.

By the time he arrived outside of the sprawling university, Bobby had become certain in his two tales, rehearsing them over and over again to make sure he had every intricate detail right. If the girl was in the know in terms of John being a Hunter, then he would be able to give her as much of the truth he knew, leaving out the parts surrounding the doubt of the man's sudden death; if not, John had died a hero, taking down Miguel Esperanza, the Michigan mass murderer who had been all over the news lately for killing seven women and escaping the police, and had given his life to protect an innocent, would-be victim. While he was certain the girl would be too stunned to ask anything more than "are you sure?" or "how did it happen?" just like every other time Bobby had taken to delivering bad news, it was always good to have a story to fall back on, especially since he was probably going to be speaking to more than his normal audience of one.

It hadn't been hard to find the dorm room the girl shared with someone else, multiple people on campus pointing out that "Taylor and Amy" stayed in the last room on the top floor of Dwight Hall, and to "just keep going straight until you hit Old Campus, then make a left. It's the second building in, the one with the statue of Theodore Woolsey in front of it. You can't miss it. Damn thing's an eyesore."

Passing the landmark, Bobby had found the residency hall, taking the elevator up to the top floor and knocking on the door, a whiteboard clipped to it with nothing written on it except for smudges from the last message it had contained. However, before he could stare at it for long, the thick mahogany in front of him swung open to reveal a girl with eyes stained red and a scowl plastered on her face, something about the way she was staring at him telling him he had interrupted something important. Asking for Amelia, Bobby watched as the other girl stepped away, putting a divide between her and her roommate as they stood level with each other with feet of space between them. Not sure whether or not to continue, especially if whatever was going on was immediate, Bobby paused a minute as he took in John's daughter's facial features, seeing a healthy mix of both her biological parents in her appearance. Her mother's thin and limber body was echoed in the girl's stature, though Morgan, when he had known her back in the late eighties, had been a little shorter, Amelia obviously gaining more height through John's side.

Staring at him from inside the dorm, green eyes that he had seen only hours ago took in his façade at the same time as he took in hers, Bobby registering that the girl looked like the mid-way between her brothers, Sam's nose and hair feminized while Dean's lips and eyes pursed and knitted together in confusion. There was no doubt in his mind that this girl belonged to John, though how either of those boys could have missed it, Bobby wasn't sure. Then again, Sam and Dean sometimes missed the broad side of a barn in terms of clues whenever they were hunting, so he honestly wasn't that surprised.

"I'm a friend of your dad's. You mind if I come in?" Bobby asked when the two had finished appraising each other, Amelia's stare still locked on his, something in her expression telling him that some deeply distressing news had already been delivered to her today, with Bobby showing up to add more to the pile.

Nodding slowly, both girls moved aside as he entered their room, noticing at once that the place wasn't the usual dorm he had gone to whenever interviewing co-eds about whatever job had rolled through some small, college town. Instead, the space looked like a city apartment, with a living room and two bedrooms sitting opposite each other, a bathroom sitting between one of them and the kitchen. In the common area, a leather couch sat pushed up against a wall containing movie posters, the coffee and end tables covered with newspapers and books that Bobby recognized as being ones similar to those he had at home— _Archangels and Demons _sitting on top with _Vampires: Enduring Evil_ stacked beside it. Taking comfort in the fact that he could tell the girl the truth about John's departure, Bobby relaxed a little as the girl who he guessed to be the roommate, Taylor, showed him to the sofa, asking him if he wanted anything to drink and sinking into a dark corner of the kitchen when he declined.

Turning to look at Amelia as she sat down beside him, Bobby frowned as he noticed the heavy look on her face, her skin seeming pale as though she had been sick, the shadows the ornate windows cast across the room causing her to look even more tired than he had originally thought. In all ways, it seemed like the wrong time to deliver information about John's death, the girl's distraught expression telling him as much, but he knew it would eventually be better to tell her now rather than to delay it, not doing anyone any favors by sparing her feelings for a day. Sometimes, oddly, Bobby noticed that people took bad news better when they were already upset, adding it to a pile to deal with whenever they were finished with whatever had been previously bothering them. Hopefully, this would be one of those situations, the ones where the person getting the raw end of the deal just got angry rather than sad. Bobby had always been inept in dealing with crying women, with years of experience still unable to change that.

"I'm afraid I got a bit of bad news," Bobby said, licking his lips as he sat up straighter, sighing before continuing and speaking slowly, letting each word sink in with finality. "Couple of nights ago, your daddy died. Was killed in a car wreck out on I-83. Your brothe—Sam and Dean were with him, but they survived."

Pausing as he allowed what he said to ring a bell on the girl's face, Bobby looked over at her, noticing that instead of incredulousness or disbelief marring her face like so many other people before her, he saw a look of understanding, as though something in her head had finally clicked. Not sure whether or not it would be appropriate to ask, Bobby kept his mouth shut while Amelia swallowed hard, the news soaking up the realization in her eyes and turning into sorrow. After a few moments, her eyes were brimming with tears again, the red from whatever had been going on before he had knocked on the door having remained. Letting a couple of drops trickle silently down her face, Amelia nodded, letting out a deep breath.

"Did he… did he die in the car?" Amelia asked, biting her lip.

Shaking his head, Bobby answered honestly, repeating the same story Sam had given him yesterday morning, though editing out and changing some of the details: John, Dean, and Sam had been hunting a demon in Aurora, South Dakota, the hunt turning dangerous when John had gotten himself possessed by the thing, with the demon turning the tables on the brothers, almost killing Dean before Sam had put a stop to it by coaxing the thing out of his father. Rushing to the hospital to get Dean checked out for his injuries, a semi-truck had plowed into their car, smashing one side entirely in hopes of murdering all three Winchesters, the demon getting out to finish the job but running scared once Sam had pulled a gun on it. Getting taken down to the state hospital, Sam had been released as soon as the doctors saw that he hadn't taken the brunt of the hit, but he had been the only one who had been okay directly after the accident. Dean, on the other hand, had been in a coma with a mess of internal contusions and ruptures that didn't look likely to heal, whereas John had been up and around after only hours of being taken into a private room, his arm broken but seeming otherwise fine. For the whole day following the accident, Sam had sat beside his brother's bed, waiting for him to wake up, surprised when he finally had, the doctor even shocked to see that Dean was alive and well. However, John's condition had worsened over the course of the day, and going unsupervised by nurses as he walked around the hospital alone, had collapsed in his room, a heart attack striking him as quick as a cobra, with no one noticing the man passed out on the floor until it was too late.

Bunching her jaw, Amelia had frowned, seeming just like her brother before her to find the hitch in the story, but choosing not to say anything. Letting tears fall regardless, Amelia remained quiet while she dealt with the information, Bobby turning his focus from her to her friend in the kitchen, finding that the other girl was standing beside the sink, watching her roommate as though she was a mixture of sad and vigilant, her eyes glued to Amelia as though she was waiting for her to grow wings and fly away. Shifting back over to John's daughter, Bobby heard her stomach rumble, causing an embarrassed look to appear on her face, right before she got up to pretend to mess with one of the posters tacked to the wall.

"Thank you for coming and telling me that," Amelia said, giving him a weak smile, something in her eyes overriding the gesture, something like fear. "Would you like something to drink to take with you? You're probably thirsty from driving all the way here."

"I'm…"

However, before Bobby could get the rest of his sentence out, Amelia turned and headed for the bathroom, the sound of vomiting soon following. Furrowing his brow in concern and hoping that he hadn't been the one to bring on the sudden inability to keep food down, Bobby nodded to the roommate in the kitchen whose eyes had followed her friend into the other room, the girl ignoring him as he headed for the front door. Stopping just before gripping the handle, Bobby turned around to watch the two while the shorter brunette grabbed a book off the sink and flipped through the pages, Amelia seeming none the wiser while she prayed to the porcelain prince.

Before turning and leaving, Bobby pulled his wallet from his back pocket and retrieved one of his Singer Salvage business cards, his cell phone number prominently displayed on the front, and placing it on the table near the door. Glancing back one last time as Amelia said something to her roommate that he could barely hear, Bobby closed the room off behind him with a loud snap, walking brusquely down the hall and searching for the elevator. For some reason, something about those few moments of interaction had caused a shiver to run down his spine, as though something was wrong, or as if they were trying to hide something, something that may be causing Amelia to get sick. In all his time as a Hunter, he had seen only two things get that pale: vampires and _something else_, the latter seeming much more likely than the former. If he had to guess, just going by the looks of it, the friend seemed to be researching something in that thick volume, as though hoping to diagnose Amelia's heavy vomiting with the contents of _Creatures of Modern Society_, the tension in the room before he had arrived telling him that something was desperately wrong.

Kicking the thought away for a moment to head back downstairs and across the lawn toward his truck parked in one of the metered stalls out on the street, Bobby got behind the wheel, staring out at the cars and students around him, kids sitting laughing and talking under the trees in groups on the grassy ground while the tops of vehicles shined up in the sun. Though it was November, the cold wasn't as biting as he had expected, instead a little bit warmer than it was in Sioux Falls; probably warm enough for all the red-blooded, East Coast Yankees parked in various positions on the lawn to head outside in the light sweaters they were dressed in, used to the snow that fell heavily on this side of the continental U.S.

Pulling his vehicle away from the curb and heading down the road as he focused back on getting away from the school, Bobby smirked for a minute as he quickly noticed that his rusted blue 1968 Ford F-350 looked like a certified clunker next to the Mercedes and BMWs parked along the stretching boulevard, some of the co-eds staring while his truck passed by them and headed deeper into New Haven. Ignoring them, Bobby navigated his way through the labyrinth of one-way streets and back alleys, finally finding a main road and taking it into West Haven, a town much less populated. As he looked for any signs of a motel nearby, Bobby yawned, wanting a place to rest his head and shack up for a few nights.

Honestly, he had planned his trip to Connecticut to last only one day, spending a handful of hours catching up on the sleep he missed from driving, then returning home to Sam and Dean in the morning. But something about the last few seconds he had been in the girls' expansive suite had caused him to rethink that plan. Something weird was going on, and if it was just between them, then he would return to South Dakota as soon as possible with no skin off his back. If not, if this was something more much like he suspected, then he would rather be safe than sorry. Spending a little bit of money at the local rest stop and putting his feelers out never did anybody any harm. He wasn't about to leave town with such a strong suspicion in his gut, one that told him one of those girls in there were going to need his help.


	10. Chapter 8

EIGHT

Dwight Hall, Yale  
New Haven, Connecticut  
Monday, November 6, 2006  
2:07 PM

**A**my had had the same dream every time she fell asleep, seeing the same crushed car and the same lush landscape as before, though now she understood its meaning—though didn't know why it was happening in the first place. The car had obviously been that boxy black vehicle she had seen on multiple occasions during the summer, Sam and Dean behind the wheel as they left the parking lot of whatever motel the diner she worked at was stationed on. She should have known by the shape of it. New cars weren't that long, nor were they made out of pure metal like that one had been, and the feeling she got whenever she touched it in her vision had told her that something was wrong, thought she hadn't been able to place exactly why.

And "why" seemed to be the question of the day: Why had she dreamt about the aftermath of the collision, finding the car on the rural highway, as though left behind by the police after they had finished investigating the wreck? Why had she known that something had been awry the moment she placed her fingers on the cold roof of the Chevrolet, something going through her like a wave of disturbance once her hand felt the icy car? And why was she dreaming about some field? What did that have to do with John's death, if it had anything to do with it at all?

In all her questioning in the time since Bobby Singer had come and gone, Amy had summoned no solutions, only dwelling on what she had been told, sensing that something was wrong all the way around. Bobby's story, while seeming truthful, had given her the sense that there were missing pieces somewhere along the line, missing pieces that not even the man telling the tale had been able to solve. As he had wrapped up his explanation, something on his face had been mirrored in hers, a curiosity that appeared to leak into his expression whether he had known it or not. But unlike her, there had been something else in his eyes, anger, almost as though he had suspected that John had been up to no good right before he had kicked the bucket.

However, all of that still remained buried under the troubles Amy had been experiencing with herself. Over the past twenty-four hours, Amy had been on a rotating schedule of sleeping and vomiting, running to the bathroom whenever she woke up and nearly passing out in exhaustion and famine whenever she made it back to her bed. As her stomach rumbled, threatening to feast on itself if she didn't eat anything, Amy tried to keep her mind away from the subject of food, wondering whether or not that would sustain her anymore or continue to taste like garbage. Every now and again, after her heaving fit, Amy would get up to walk aimlessly around the kitchen, sometimes running into Taylor when she did so. Her friend seemed to be keeping her distance, as though afraid that Amy might strike, and immediately locked herself in her room whenever she heard the sound of Amy's stomach rumbling.

Right before Bobby had left, their conversation interrupted by the beginning of her sleep-and-barf double whammy, Taylor had followed Amy into the bathroom, reading an excerpt from the book in her hands that appeared to explain what was happening, the words seeming vague and unclear. According to the volume, Amy's body was attempting to purify itself of the toxins that had been in her system prior to the changes, and that the throwing up wouldn't stop until she was completely clean. Relating it to drug addicts who had to rid themselves of the poison they had put in their bodies before they could make the first step to recovery, Amy had listened to Taylor speak, tuning out whenever her friend went back into reading the book in her hands, certain that they had already found the damning evidence that she was no longer human, Amy not wanting to hear anything more that solidified that fact.

Unfortunately, after last night's vision of wreckage and fields, Amy couldn't help but wonder whether or not vampires experienced prophetic dreams, though why they would have that ability was anyone's guess. As soon as she had awoken on the morning following Bobby's visit, the churning of her stomach gone for now, Amy had taken to the book Taylor had been reading, skimming over the pages and searching for any key words that would point her to clairvoyance. After awhile, when the old tomes had failed her, Amy had taken to searching the Internet, only coming upon references to a book called _Twilight_ that had been released late last year. Giving up entirely, Amy had remained in bed until after ten, getting up to pace the length of the living room as she glanced at the clock every now and again, knowing that by this time on a normal day, she would be in Theatre History.

For some reason, the idea of school and learning and books now seemed so passé, her whole life now doomed to be lived out, whatever she had left of it, as something she had never imagined. Homework and tests and studying were nothing more than a memory now that she walked back and forth, her mind seeming to be mentally counting the hours as she took in the numbers on the face of the digital readout on the end table. So far, she had managed to live longer than she had expected, half hoping and half fearing that Taylor was going to lop off her head the afternoon before when she had emerged from her bedroom for the first time in hours. Instead, the two of them had cried together, as if mourning her loss already, neither of them having the strength to do more than sob hysterically.

But it was only a matter of time before execution day came. With every minute that passed, Amy grew hungrier, the weight of her absence of nutrition getting to her as her knees buckled every now and again, causing Amy to feel as if she was going to fall to the floor if she didn't pick herself up. Still, after remaining in the living area, touching one wall before heading for another, Taylor had yet to come out of her room, probably holed up in there either to stay away from her now-dangerous friend or to try to find a cure, something to reverse the effects that had already taken hold of Amy, things that were changing her physically as well as wearing her out.

The night before, when she had been stumbling into the bathroom, Amy had wrenched the door open, the sound of metal hitting the floor reaching her ears and temporarily distracting her from the rising bile when she realized that the knob to the bathroom was now gripped solidly in her hand, the screws that had been holding it in place now bouncing off the wood underfoot as the door drifted open without it. Knowing that it hadn't been loose prior to her ripping it free from its position, Amy had nearly hyperventilated. Before, she had been able to break locks just by twisting as hard as possible, but had always written that off as old handles or mechanics. This, however, just like the rest of the doors in Dwight Hall, had been replaced over the summer break, the wood still shining a bright white and the brass fixtures still gleaming from their paint job and newness.

But that hadn't been the end of her sudden bursts of strength. Other than ripping the doorknob free the doorknob, Amy had managed to break the alarm clock in her bedroom by smashing it too hard when it had gone off to get her up for class, as well as ripped a sweater when she tried to put it on after taking a shower—a thick, wool one that she only wore around Christmas to appease the grandparents who had bought it for her two years ago. Oddly, Amy had a feeling her stint as the Incredible Hulk wasn't finished, instead just beginning, that particular problem not seeming to fade away as quickly as the other symptoms had, instead spanning well into the afternoon from when it had begun the evening before.

On top of that, there was something else that bothered her, the squirming in her gut that wasn't caused by nauseated vomiting. It was the same tickle she had experienced the other night right before she had fought against the vampire in the lumber yard, the feather in her stomach that tickled the lining. For some reason, this bugged her more than anything else, giving her the sense that there was something lurking just out of sight, and sending shivers down her spine whenever she felt it, the sensation coming like a thousand eyes watching her from a hidden location. However, that feeling didn't seem to be anything new, a pre-existing condition that had started at a diner in Brewer, Maine when a demon posing as an old man sat at the same booth every day, ordering the same coffee and pie, probably running surveillance on her all summer long.

Was there someone watching her? Or was she paranoid? In all honesty, she had no idea. It was possible that, since she had only begun to feel the stare and not the tickle until after she had started changing, that this was something new, some sense vampires came equipped with that alerted them of Hunters, causing a terror that was forever there in her chest, and causing her shoulders to tense whenever she dwelled on it. Every now and again, the eyes glaring at her back were overbearing, seeming closer than ever before, and causing her to want to throw up again. Instead, each time the bile rose, she swallowed it down, gagging as her body shivered from the sensation.

Kicking the thought away just as the sound of Taylor making noise in her bedroom reached her ears, her hearing seeming to be sharper than ever, Amy paused her pacing and stopped to listen harder, pounding and thumping coming from inside, as if her friend were throwing something hard at the walls. Bunching her jaw before heading for the door, Amy carefully let it drift open, seeing that Taylor was tossing every book she owned into the closet with a fervor that caused her to remain undistracted as she hardened her hit. With every solid thud against the back of the wardrobe, Amy could see tears flowing heavily on her roommate's face, something seeming to have happened between the last time Amy had seen her and now—something that had upset Taylor more than she had been before Bobby had appeared at their door, interrupting their moment of silence and grieving process.

Heading deeper into the room, Amy could hear Taylor begin muttering as she came down to the last of the thick volumes, the words coming out jumbled but still making sense as Amy deciphered them: "Nothing. I can't. No cure. Dead. My fault. Dead."

Wanting to cross the floor and reach for Taylor's hand to stop her, Amy instead let the girl finish, watching her crumble down onto the ground the moment she had run out of things to throw. Softening her gaze, Amy could feel the sadness that was radiating off of Taylor in waves, her friend obviously reaching the end of her rope in an attempt to fix the other girl, there being no hope left, the hope that Amy hadn't know Taylor was holding onto. Sighing heavily as sobs shook her body, Taylor cried, falling onto her side when she could no longer hold herself up.

Holding back the emotional pain that threatened to rise in her throat, Amy finally headed for her friend, sinking down in front of her and crossing her legs, helping Taylor into a sitting position as the two stared at one another, Taylor's brown eyes stained with an inconsolable red. Reaching her palm out, Amy grasped for her friend's fingers, not sure what she was doing as their hands intertwined. Taylor's skin felt hot against Amy's, the anger bubbling to the surface to emit physical heat, and looked smaller and more delicate than before. The two had always been an odd match as friends, with Amy having six inches over Taylor and always feeling awkward whenever the two of them stood in a crowd, Taylor shrinking into the masse whenever they stood beside each other due to how petite she was.

Staring up at her as confusion and fear marred Taylor's face, Amy sent her friend a comforting smile, not saying anything as the two of them squeezed each other's fingers, Taylor flowing all of her frustration into Amy's grasp while Amy received the disappointment that not finding a cure had provided. Though the two of them had never touched often, their arms occasionally brushing and hugs occasionally exchanged, this had been the first time either of them had sat level, looking at one another. In all honesty, Amy had no idea what had possessed her to initiate whatever they were doing, instead simply allowing Taylor to channel her anger into her friend through rough compressions that should have broken Amy's fingers but didn't. If she had this newfound vampire strength, she was going to do something good with it in the time that she had left.

For hours, the two sat there, holding onto one another for dear life as though letting go would mean letting each other slip away. As tears flowed, memories of earlier years were drudged up, and laughs broke through the sessions of sobs they both endured, a hollowness grew in Amy's heart as the feeling of mourning came between them once again. While Amy and Taylor sat with their legs folded and knees touching, their bodies closer together than they had ever been, a separation was forming between them, almost as though her friend was preparing to let go despite the fact that Amy was still there in front of her. As a glint of sadness flickered in her eye off of the sunlight behind her, Taylor's thoughts were clear on her face: by this time tomorrow, it would be over. There was a resolve there that couldn't be denied, one that said the other girl had made up her mind even before they had lamented the loss of both their relationship and Amy's life.

In the pit of her stomach, Amy could tell that this was it, this was the last time they would be together as friends rather than enemies. Taylor was right. This couldn't go on any longer. The hunger that she felt throughout her whole body was driving her insane, making Amy a combination of weak and delirious, as though she would do anything to satisfy the urge to eat. If they waited one more day, it was likely that Taylor would be dead and Amy would be gone, the change finalizing the moment she tasted human blood. She had put it off for as long as she could, but the countdown had already started on her final hours the moment Taylor had resolved to herself that it was now or never, Amy's swan song to come and go on the day she turned twenty-one.

This was it. This was the end of the road. By two P.M. tomorrow, she would be dead.


	11. Chapter 9

NINE

Old Campus Courtyard, Yale  
New Haven, Connecticut  
Monday, November 6, 2006  
4:49 PM

**B**obby knew that sitting parked in the middle of the Yale University campus was playing it a little close to the chest, especially since he was sitting directly outside of Dwight Hall, the only thing protecting him from being seen being that unfortunate statue that stared out at the building. But he had a reason for being there, one that might or might not fly should he be spotted by either of the girls he had visited only a day ago.

He had been stationed out on a stone bench for the greater part of the last three hours, having just woken up from his twenty-four hour coffee and persistence marathon after sleeping the rest of the day and night away. By the time he had stirred just after noon, the first time in a long time that he had snoozed so late, Bobby had remembered the reason he was sticking around New Haven, getting dressed and heading for the school, pit stopping only to grab breakfast at McDonald's and managing to swallow down the greasy food in a whole two bites while he directed his truck back toward the university.

When he had rolled up to the metered stall he had used the afternoon prior, Bobby had quickly noticed that the campus was more abuzz today than it was yesterday, with students bustling from class to class, the whole area in his line of sight seeming packed and crowded while every single co-ed hurried to get out of the cold and into the warmth of the buildings. As he walked toward Dwight Hall, dressed much differently than the day before, neither guy nor gal gave him a weary look unlike during his previous trek through the courtyards of Yale, the tattered tweed coat and raveling sweater he was wearing probably causing the kids around him to assume he was one of the numerous professors on campus, one they hadn't seen or heard of, but undoubtedly existed nonetheless.

Taking a seat directly in view of the dormitory's front doors, Bobby had popped a book open in his lap to make him look busy, his eyes truly trained on the entrance to the residence hall instead of the pages of _Redburn _by Herman Melville. While he waited, he attempted to go over his suspicions behind what had happened the day before and what it might mean, a list of various things calculating in his head but ending in no result. For a man who had studied every demon, witch, vampire, wendigo, skin-walker, shape-shifer, rugaru, rawhead, werewolf, and ghost out there, he was still drawing blanks when it came to figuring out whether his watchful eye stationed in the courtyard was worth something or for naught. Though not much had happened the night before, just one girl getting sick while the other consulted a book that Bobby knew would lead to nothing good, it was enough to send a shiver down his spine. In his experience, the only reason to consult _Creatures of the Modern World_ was if you suspected something inside had gone supernaturally awry, with it telling you almost exactly how various beings were made and turned, though giving little warning as to the actual pain any of the transmutations caused.

However, Bobby had known Morgan Callahan, and he had known the curse that shouldered the woman, making whatever his mind could come up with an impossibility in terms of Amelia and that book. While it was probable that the girl was undergoing _changes_, it was also highly possible that she and her friend had misdiagnosed the problem, most likely causing them to think something else was wrong with the youngest Winchester rather than what was actually getting set into motion. Morgan's condition was hereditary, coming into its own around the women in her line's twenty-first birthday, and a quick glance at Sam's printout, which Bobby had taken with him to Connecticut, told him that Amelia wasn't too far off from that eventual date.

Unfortunately, whether either of the two girls knew that, Bobby didn't know, and it wasn't his business to tell them. John, when he had been alive, should have taken the time out to inform the girl what was going to happen to her once she became the legal drinking age rather than leaving her unaware while he went off to track down the demon that gave the man tunnel vision. If Bobby had to guess, John's plan had been to hope that somehow the condition had skipped a generation, something that happened maybe one-percent of the time, so that he could keep the girl in the dark. John Winchester, in all the years that Bobby had known him, had never been known to be outwardly truthful, keeping things a secret and admonishing whoever went against his unsaid restrictions by giving them a good berating that often ended in "I told you so", even though he never once opened his mouth to give anyone the warning that they were walking into a trap—case in point being Bill Harvelle.

Still, alterations aside, Bobby felt the need to watch Dwight Hall, the feeling that something was due to happen itching at the back of his neck like a bug that wouldn't quit. Beside him on the bench were copies of the local newspaper that the McDonald's he had stopped at had carried, a week's worth in total and starting the previous Monday. According to at least a few dozen articles that sounded the same, something had been going around town taking bites out of people's necks and leaving the bodies behind, their blood drained to the last drop. Instantly, Bobby had recognized what was going on in town, and couldn't help but assume what the two girls were distressing themselves over up on the top floor: Amy probably getting bitten by the thing and immediately supposing she was done for.

As the week progressed throughout the clippings—with the death toll reaching the small number of five despite the multiple write-ups on the topic, most of them opinion pieces citing television-influenced teenagers to be behind the attacks—Bobby could see that the deaths suddenly stopped on Saturday morning, a body being found on Friday night, it's head five feet from the rest of it, and a clean slice through the neck indicating someone with a sword or a machete had gotten to it. Judging by the fact that Bobby knew that almost no Hunters dwelled nearby, except for Mirna Bridge who had since retired back in 1996, he could only imagine who had been behind the decapitation of the vampire to blame for the body count. However, if that had something to do with the reason those girls were consulting that book like a medical journal, he would never know.

Ultimately, something about the idea that the number of dead bodies found had only reached the tiny till of five bothered Bobby, especially since vampires fed three times a day just like humans, sometimes on multiple Happy Meals with Legs at once. Vampires got a rush out of taking a bite out of one victim while making the others watch, some sort of sadistic power surge coming over them as they sucked one person dry after another. If he had to guess, it looked as though the vampire in question had been feeding on the blood the bodies provided before feeding the remains to something else, something that would eat the corpse whole and clean up the mess the creature left behind. However, why it would still leave five out in the open to be discovered was odd, especially since the trail of leftovers would draw every Hunter within a hundred miles directly into New Haven.

Because of this, the idea that he had in his head that there was still a formidable opponent out there, Bobby had taken to watching the girls, still bothered by what he had seen the night before. Did those two really believe that book was going to help them? Did they think something involving the vampire was wrong with Amelia? Was that why the other one, Taylor, had been watching her so closely and why Amelia had jumped up and away whenever she had heard her stomach rumble? Was her friend convincing her that she was dying instead of simply changing? If that was the fact, then Bobby hoped neither girl went to the next step, especially since whatever Amelia was enduring was something that John should have explained months back in order to avoid this confusion.

Suddenly, directly in his line of sight, something walked up beside the statue of Theodore Woolsey, something not quite right about the man dressed in a cardigan and slacks that hadn't been seen since 1950. Though Bobby recognized that his own clothes were a disguise, at least they had been purchased within the last decade. This guy, whoever he was, seemed to have held onto the red ribbed sweater that was buttoned up on top of a white shirt and tie that made him look like Mr. Rogers for at least as long as Bobby had been alive. Watching him as the man shielded his eyes from the fading sun and looking up at the top row of windows the dormitory provided, Bobby noticed that the man was counting the panes of glass, as though looking for a way to determine which room was which by the number of panels shining down at him in the pink and orange sky.

Seeming dissatisfied with what he had seen, Bobby watched as the man headed for the doors inside, disappearing into the building as the heavy wood fell shut behind him. Getting up from his post for the first time in four hours, Bobby's knees cracked as he stood, with him giving no mind to it as he trailed behind Ward Cleaver. Seeing the man head for the stairs, Bobby pushed the button for the elevator, hoping it would open right off instead of making him wait. When the shining silver separated in front of him to reveal a dirty, overused inside, Bobby pushed the button to five, appearing in the hall just as his target pushed his way out of the stairwell. Watching him from the alcove of Suite 1, Bobby kept his eyes on the man as he headed down the hall, turning to knock on one of the doors on the opposite side of the corridor, the room opening to a girl who jumped up and down, excited to see that her father was there to pick her up for dinner.

Sighing dejectedly, Bobby turned around and followed his path back outside, taking up his post on the bench as the dusk began to fall into darkness, Bobby knowing that soon he was going to have to abandon his station for another alternative as soon as it became too black to see.

* * *

Nid knew from where he stood that a Hunter was keeping watch on that girl's dorm, that there was no way he was going to be able to tear into her sweet, delicate flesh unless he took down the bumbling old man sitting like a certified stalker on the bench outside of the building he was intent on entering. As he remained within a throng of other students, blending in amongst the crowd as he tried to get a feel for the skin he was currently crammed into, Nid kept his gaze fixed on the aged Hunter, wondering how easy it would be to take him down, figuring one solid punch to his spinal column would do him in, paralyzing him enough to be considered a low-level threat as opposed to the girl who had killed his partner.

Nid had known that following that snippet of information he had heard about the new kid on the block was going to be difficult to verify, made worse by the moronic partner he had chosen to do his nightly bidding for him, but once he had seen her in play, he had known what she was and what he wanted to do with her, certain that her blood would be sweeter than he had ever imagined it to be, like cherries that had been plucked at the most opportune time. All it had taken to get the ball rolling was to find skin defiled enough to allow him in, having to wait for someone so cocky, arrogant, power-obsessed, and full of shit enough to be made available, the body having to be cleared of the soul before he could inhabit it.

Once Victor had murdered the boy in cold blood out in the backyard of his house, Nid had slid his way into the corpse, him finding it a snug fit for his usual form, but figuring it would do for now. There were only so many remains that were molded to the needs of something that usually resembled a serpent with arms, this boy not yet ripe for the picking but the best they could do on a short notice. If he was going to make his strike soon, he didn't have room to complain that the son of a lawyer he had chosen to inhabit was too short and stocky for his liking, instead having to suck it up and deal with it until he could move on.

However, now that he was out amongst the living for the first time in a century, Nid realized that there seemed to be more people around who fit his description than ever before. As person after person told lies and exaggerations over accomplishments and finances, Nid couldn't help but wonder how many people in New Haven could have been used as his skin, the flesh he was having to occupy something that was required to be as slippery as his heart in order for their natures to mesh. There had been one point in time where Nid had attempted to use any old body, snaking his way into the carcass of a nun once and becoming poisoned by her holiness. As a creature of the underworld, he should have known better, having crawled out of Hell in order to defy people like the Sister he had been intent on possessing back then, but it hadn't been for lack of trying.

Ultimately, Nid had learned his lesson, though he seemed to be having an easier time transitioning between his usual form to that of the human visage he was in now, the people surrounding him and groveling at his feet reminding him of his circle of home, everyone attempting to outdo each other in some sort of contest for his affection. Hell was like that, full of the backstabbers and the demons that humanity was slowly impersonating, kindness and goodness getting thrown out the window in lieu of fame and money. In a delicious way, Nid liked it, the dog-eat-dog world providing higher entertainment values than those stupid praying pilgrims he had seen the last time he had been topside—Nid only being allowed to surface every four hundred years due to a curse that had been doled out to him back in the days of Odin and Frigga, the pair dooming him to the netherworld with a preview of life on Earth every once in awhile to give Nid perspective on what he had missed out on by consuming the corpse of Balder directly after he had been killed by Hod.

But this girl, she was the one who was the key to him receiving an all-access pass to civilization. He could already smell her, the way her body was changing, pure power coursing through her veins that would give him enough juice to undo Odin's spell. Girls like her only came once in a lifetime when he was doomed to remain in Hell for centuries on end, this one being the first he had ever heard of that was undergoing the modifications it took to come into her own while he had been above the Earth's crust, and he would be damned if it was screwed up because of one damn Hunter getting in his way.


	12. Chapter 10

TEN

Dwight Hall, Yale  
New Haven, Connecticut  
Tuesday, November 7, 2006  
12:00 AM

_**A**__my Winchester stood on the rock overlooking the castle in the distance, the ruins of it staring back at her underneath a black cloud threatening to spit out rain and lightning should she get too close. Something about it was enticing, pulling her in even from where she stood miles away, standing on a platform over an abyss that was sure to suck her in should she move from the solid foothold she had in the stone._

_ Behind her, the woman was there, still standing on the grassy plane that provided even more security from the black hole beneath Amy's feet, the ground never giving way to an emptiness that would never end. The woman was tall with dark red hair, green eyes the same color as Amy's gazing at her from across the divider between them. Her body was the same shape as the girl balancing on the boulders, with slight curves on a thin body and breasts that were almost too large for her frame. For a moment, Amy wondered who the woman could be, feeling as though they had some sort of connection between them, something that caused Amy to remain fixated on her for a long minute, ignoring the fact that she was standing in the middle of a rocky minefield that was likely to fall out from under her._

_ The woman was dressed in a white nightgown, her bare feet digging into the grass as she kept her stare fixed on the younger girl, her mouth set in a small heart shape, her features kind and smooth despite the look in her eyes that told Amy the woman had had a hard life. In the slight wind that blew, the redheaded woman's hair flew in wisps behind her face, her pale skin reflecting in the bright sunlight overhead and reminding Amy of her appearance over the past few days. She had been that pale from the vomiting and the changes, but had it been more than that? Had she inherited it?_

_ Turning her gaze away from the younger girl, the woman looked over at the castle, her mouth working in soundless words while she tried to urge the stranger on the rocks forward. Though Amy hadn't heard anything but the sound of the wind, she knew what the woman was saying: "It's time to go. It's time for you to make the dangerous journey to the other side. Down below is a path you'll never survive. You must go. They will come for you regardless."_

_ Within minutes of the directions being delivered, the woman disappeared like a fading memory, leaving Amy to stand alone on the stones separating her from the ruinous castle. However, she didn't know how to begin to cut her own path, how to make it safely to the grassland that stretched out in a small section at the end of the jutting boulders and before the steps to the door of the fortress. There were many ways to go, but none of them seemed right, almost as though every course ended with a quick trip to the abyss. The only route that didn't seem to drop off unexpectedly looked painful and harrowing, with rocks as sharp as knives pointing to the sky with their serrated edges. _

_ Glancing back at the grass, Amy wanted to turn back and wrap herself in the safety of the landscape, but as soon as she pivoted to do so, the greenery around her disappeared, abandoning her in black. Now she was stuck with only one surefire way to make it to the other side, her path destined to bleed her dry by the time she got to the lawn that surrounded the castle that was her ending point. But she was scared. She didn't want to leave her expansive platform for unsafe footing, for God-knows-what sitting on the other side. Unfortunately, the destroyed palace was calling out to her, alluring her the longer she stood in place, urging her forward just like the woman had prior to disappearing._

_ The first few jumps between rocks had been fine, with her skidding to a stop on the dirt-covered faces of the boulders and landing too close to the edge as each stone got smaller the deeper toward the center she came. When she had finally arrived at the sharper platforms, the ones that were going to cut her skin as if she were nothing but tissue paper, Amy had braced herself for the impact, feeling nothing as the pointed edges sliced her open and caused her to bleed. She knew it should have hurt but didn't, and carried on with renewed gusto now that she could no longer sense the wounds she was collecting on her way toward the other side. _

_ Hugging the last rock before the greenery, her body likely to slip into the blackness due to her feet having no hold on the obtuse slope she was gripped to, Amy saw that her final challenge lie in getting to her destination, two feet of air separating her from the lawn that looked lush and comforting. Hitching herself further up the rock, Amy's arms and legs were cut by the knife-like edges of the stone. As soon as she got to the tip of the boulder pointing toward the sky, Amy readied herself as the wind picked up, thunder overhead growling threateningly. Somehow, she knew that as soon as she jumped, the dark clouds would begin to stir and the weather would interfere with her survival. Still, she had to try._

_ Pushing off with her feet, Amy felt her body rise and then fall, and fall, and fall. Slipping just past the edge of where the grass lay, Amy's torso slid through the gap between air and sod, her arm catching the lip as the wind threatened to blow her away. Above her, rain came down in sheets, making her hold release as she was about to pull herself over the side. Grabbing the edge at the last minute with the fingers of her left hand, Amy felt her body dangle beneath her in the nothingness, the fear enveloping her at the prospect of falling causing her to reach her other arm up to hold on. Thunder and lightning brightened the sky, rolling in deafening waves, and nearly startling her, but Amy managed to keep her grip, pulling herself up and over the side in one swift motion just as the wind kicked up to a level comparable of the inside of a tornado. _

_ Lying on her back in the wet grass, Amy soaked up the sun that shone on this part of the land, the weather changing completely and becoming a soft spring day at once. Letting out a deep breath and collapsing the fear that she had almost fallen into oblivion, Amy remained where she was for a moment longer before the castle began to call to her again, propelling her to her feet quickly as she looked up at the ruins. _

_ She thought she recognized this place from somewhere, maybe in a book or a movie she had seen, but it felt familiar nonetheless, as thought it gave her a sense of home. Heading for the entrance that had once housed a large door, Amy nodded to herself before walking through the threshold, everything inside dark as the blackness enveloped her._

Waking with a start, Amy screamed as pain unlike anything she had ever known ripped through her body, causing her back to arch as she lie in bed, kicking off the covers as heat came over her and burned her skin. Inside, a frigid cold worked on her organs, making breathing difficult and restrictive, while everything else felt too bright, too loud, or too nauseating. It was as though everything she had felt over the past few days was hitting her all at once, eclipsing the pain from before tenfold as she tried to remain still, moving becoming too agonizing to even attempt.

Suddenly, Amy felt as though every bone and muscle in her body were being broken and torn, every tendon and ligament getting shredded to pieces while her skeleton was destroyed starting from her feet. It wasn't long before she felt paralyzed from the neck down, though the fire and ice that raged within her still battled on and continued to freeze and burn her, their relentless grip refusing to lose hold.

Everything remained torturous for hours, with the pain coupling with slicing and smashing in the most excruciating way imaginable. At times, she would see her hands twitch or arms shake as the sensation of a serrated blade covered in salt being taken to her skin rose up and down her arm, with Amy unable to do anything that would prevent the cruelty from taking place. It was as if someone with a knife was standing just beyond human perception, cutting into her and taking pleasure in it as they picked her apart. Was this part of the changes? Was she supposed to suffer for what she was before she could do anything more than inflict sorrow on herself? She had already grieved her own loss. Was there more?

Into the wee hours of the morning, Amy's body underwent the agony of the invisible spectre taking his time slicing into her, none of it becoming any easier, the temperatures at war with one another only adding to the pain. In her mind, everything raced as information she had never known appeared in flashes as though she had entered The Matrix, downloading thoughts and images and battle strategies she never would have learned on her own. It was as thought a database was growing in her head, along with the assuredness that whatever alterations she was undergoing, it had nothing to do with Taylor's original diagnosis. Vampires didn't know how to assemble and disassemble an M-16, how to invade enemy territory without being seen, or how to categorize demons by type. This, whatever this _was_,was something else.

As she learned things she would probably later forget, a different type of knowledge was placed inside her head, one that came from her heart rather than a series of pictures. While Taylor had been half-right about Amy changing and becoming something else, something non-human, it hadn't been the creature she had originally suspected. As bones popped and muscles multiplied, Amy felt as though she was being recreated for war, as though she was becoming a weapon of some kind, a weapon that would be used as a blunt instrument to destroy a legion. However, this war and its soldiers weren't that of normal concerns, no invasion of Iran or Desert Storms or men who knew to keep it civil after dark, but rather one of man against demon, the gates of Hell being the only thing keeping the battle at bay for now. But it was coming. And it was coming soon.

As visions flashed before her eyes and her skin burned as though melting away, Amy could sense that as her body changed, she was going to have to change with it. The non-human existence she was about to lead wasn't one that involved a normal life and friends and family, but one that left her lonely and alone. She was to become an island if she was going to fight, to protect herself and to protect others. Once the bow broke, they would be coming for her, and it wouldn't just be demons on the hunt, looking for anything and everything that they could use to get to her. The people she loved were liabilities to her as much as she was a liability to them. As soon as the metamorphosis finished, she was going to have to cut her ties and leave. Yale was no longer safe, no matter how much she had wanted it to be.

Suddenly, just as quickly as it had begun, the pain had stopped, causing Amy to lie still as every feeling faded away and left her panting feverishly on the bed, her body sweating but no longer hot and her toes cold from the November day but no longer internally inflicted. The change was over, and as tears fell from her eyes into her hair from where she remained inert, Amy could fell that the mourning she had previously felt over her life when she had thought she was going to die had been appropriate. The Amy Winchester she had known was now a thing of the past, replaced and remolded with someone who was no longer protected by parents or the brownstone walls of the university. Instead, she was someone who had to save others as well as save herself, a guardian as much as a soldier in the oncoming and never-ending battle between good and evil.

Strangely, as the truth rang throughout her body, Amy felt nothing but clarity, as though this was the thing she had been waiting her whole life for, for this moment to come. All that time beforehand, in the twenty years she spent being the reticent girl who barely spoke and hardly stood up for herself, Amy had gotten her taste for the other side, and had been allowed to live normally in order to know what it was like for everyone else, to be one of the civilians who needed someone to protect them. She was now lying on her back in the grass after having just crossed the dagger-shaped rocks to get to the opposite end of the spectrum, cutting her arms and legs and causing her to bleed, surviving despite her initial reluctance to make the journey across.

But along with clarity came sadness, the sense that a divider had erected itself between her and the rest of the world, as though she was separated from humanity by a thin veil, never to be one of them again. There was a loneliness in the idea that she would never be able to relate to another soul again, having to navigate the waters alone from this point on, with not even her best friend for comfort and support as soon as Amy left her behind in order to offer her the protection Taylor probably wouldn't take but had to have. For some reason, Amy now felt like a target as well as a warrior, giving her the sense that everything that _could be _out there _would be _coming straight for her. Though she didn't know why, something in her heart told her she was entering a game of cat and mouse in which the hunter and hunted was forever changing, never staying the same day in and day out.

Sitting up in bed, Amy suddenly jerked her head to the left as something caught her attention, a presence out in the hall that seemed to radiate a darkness that she could easily identify as unnatural. Recognizing it as the same thing that had been lurking around campus, giving her the feeling that something had been watching her, Amy shut her eyes and listened for signs of movement in the corridor, the sound of feet shuffling toward hers and Taylor's suite coming before a loud knock echoed throughout the living room.


	13. Chapter 11

ELEVEN

Dwight Hall, Yale  
New Haven, Connecticut  
Tuesday, November 7, 2006  
3:17 AM

**D**espite the strength she could feel emanating from her core, Amy still crept to the door, a mixture of curious and worried as to what was there just beyond the wood separating her from the hallway. Whatever it was, it was something powerful, something that was most likely going to attempt to rip her apart just like the pain had moments ago, and if she didn't play it cool, things were going to escalate quickly before she could get Taylor out and to safety, her friend needing to stay clear of this to keep from seeing what Amy was capable of, something in her gut telling her that the changes had to remain something of a secret.

Heading to the door still dressed in her pajamas, Amy opened it wide to reveal someone she thought she recognized, but had no idea why. However, before she had time to place her finger on where she had seen him before, the man attacked, grabbing her around the shoulders and propelling her into the wall across the suite. Within seconds, Taylor was out of her room, her mouth falling open and a look of astonishment on her face as her eyes went from the twenty-something guy standing just inside their doorway to Amy sitting heaped against the wood flooring, covered in drywall.

"Chase?!"

It didn't take longer than that for Amy to realize who had just entered the living room. Chase DuPonte, son of Richard and brother of Charles, was standing a few yards from both Amy and Taylor with a look of savage hunger on his face, teeth bared in a way Amy found both threatening and frightening. It was easy to see that the man was either possessed or compromised, with the jagged yellow daggers in his mouth looking both similar and dissimilar to vampire fangs, his jaws filled with thick, stained points that aligned themselves in uneven rows.

Paying no mind to Taylor, Chase rushed Amy again, picking her up by the front of her pajama top and shoving her into the wall, leaving her feet hanging above the ground. As he growled hungrily, his jowls snapping in a disgusting crack, Amy leaned away from his rotten breath, the odor reminding her of decaying corpses, or what she would imagine them to smell like. As his face got next to her neck, Amy recoiled even further before raising a hand to strike him across the face, sheer strength rising as she watched Chase hit the floor in a way that sent him sliding across the slick hardwood.

"Taylor, get out of here, now!" Amy warned as Chase jumped to his feet.

Beside her, Taylor didn't budge, instead keeping her position firmly as though refusing to move. Ignoring her friend as Chase came for her for the third time, Amy grabbed the guy's outstretched arm and flipped him onto his back, Chase instead landing on his feet with surprising agility and turning the tables on her. Throwing a punch that nearly connected with her face, Amy grabbed his arm at the last second and returned the blow, watching as Chase recoiled, then sending a roundhouse kick to his head, knocking him to the ground for the second time. While he recovered, Amy glanced at Taylor while she kept her hands at the ready, fists balled in front of her in preparedness while her friend stood dumbstruck.

"Taylor, I said go!"

Still not getting the hint, Taylor only moved backward, her shoulders hitting the frame of her door as she watched while Amy took on the possessed version of Chase DuPonte, his teeth gnashing savagely as though the only thought on his mind was to bite off a chuck of Amy's flesh. By the fourth time he came at her, Amy started to get into the swing of fighting, the feeling that would have previously kicked her into the passenger's seat of her own body flowing like a second instinct and guiding her, telling her what to do next and what moves to pull, like a coach drilling its student. When Chase punched, Amy blocked, then returned with the heel of her palm to his chin, forcing his head back and sending him reeling. When he kicked, Amy caught his leg and sent him spiraling to the ground.

However, no matter how well she reciprocated the blows, Chase was still recovering quickly, most of his punches connecting as he changed his target from her face to her stomach and aimed his kicks for her ribs. As Amy was knocked into the wall, falling down and remaining on her hands and knees for a minute while she tried to catch her breath after it had been knocked out, Chase came to deliver a solid punt to her abdomen, causing her body to jump off the ground with the force of the hit. By the time she had managed to deliver five solid strikes to his body, he had dished out ten more, the only thing equal about them being the inhuman strength that would have kept them on a level playing field had they both experienced the same amount of bloodlust, Chase obviously hungry for victory.

By the time Amy was coughing up red-tinted spit after Chase had connected his fist with her kidney, someone else had appeared in the open doorway to the suite, someone who she had initially thought to be another opponent. Realizing just as Chase backhanded her across the face that Bobby Singer was there, staring at her with surprise and knowing, Amy had fallen to the floor, kicking herself up from the ground a second later by propelling herself onto her feet through rocking back on her shoulders and pushing up with her hands. Remaining in the doorframe for a minute while Amy kicked Chase into the shut door to the bathroom, splintering it off the hinges, Bobby waited before rushing over to Taylor, dragging her, despite her persistence to stay, out into the hall.

"This fight ain't for you," Bobby told her when they were safely in the corridor, watching as though patrons in the stands.

Within a minute, Chase was up on his feet again, coming at Amy with a fever that was unmatched. Landing a spinning kick to her side, then an uppercut to her jaw, Amy was launched through the air and onto the coffee table, breaking it underneath her as though in payback for the bathroom door. Unfortunately, Amy was unable to recover as quickly as her opponent had, a part of the broken wood embedding itself in her side painfully. Pulling it out slowly, with a scream that was doomed to wake up the rest of Dwight Hall if the noise from the fight hadn't already, Amy tossed the bloody scrap of cedar aside, not able to get up fast enough before Chase was on all fours on top of her, his fangs bared and nearing her throat.

"I've been waiting a long time for this," he muttered, his words slurring as though his mouth was off kilter from either the unnatural teeth or the blows Amy had delivered straight to his face. "You don't know how long."

"I don't care to know," Amy retorted, keeping Chase off of her by grabbing his shoulders and placing her foot into his chest, sending him flying into the wall between one of the ornate windows by swinging backwards and kicking at the same time.

Jumping to her feet, Amy stood at the ready just as the sound of voices out in the hallway started to carry into the suite, temporarily distracting her and leaving her wide open for Chase's tackle. As he took her to the ground, they both landed, their bodies skidding across the wood floor just as gasping outside echoed throughout the shattered room. Throwing him off of her and into the kitchen cabinets, Amy jumped to her feet and rushed to shut the front door, Bobby standing out in the corridor, orchestrating the onlookers and telling them this was a private demonstration. Not sure how they were going to buy it, especially since she couldn't quite see what kind of demonstration Yale would have, Amy closed off the room and turned to Chase just as he slammed her into the door, splintering the wood but not breaking it.

"What the hell is your problem?" Amy asked as she pushed Chase off of her, getting tired of the altercation, not sure what had sparked it or even what was going on, something she probably should have looked into before the fight had begun.

"You're the key I need for freedom," Chase growled, remaining in place as he explained. "I've been waiting thousands of years for this. I will kill you and I will use your power to put an end to my suffering. I've been locked away in Hell for centuries, and I have nothing to show for it. You will change all that."

Furrowing her brow in confusion, Amy bunched her jaw. "How?"

"Your blood and your flesh. You're the only one of your kind who changed tonight. You have raw, untrained power in your veins. I _need_ it. I _want_ it," Chase answered, not pausing to allow Amy to process what he said, instead charging full speed ahead and slamming her into the wall, keeping her there by the grip of his hand on her throat, her breath escaping her lungs on impact with none flowing in to replace it.

Dropping her as she began to choke, Chase placed her feet on the ground and temporarily released her, taking a bite out of her neck and missing her carotid artery by millimeters as she moved away. Chewing on the piece he had managed to get, Amy elbowed him in the nose before reaching up to staunch the blood that was leaking down onto her pajama top. A lot of it was flowing, but not enough to scare her. Instead, she grabbed a paper towel from the kitchen just as Chase came after her again, his jaws snapping, and doubling over after Amy delivered a kick to his stomach.

However, her boredom with battling against him didn't last long, soon to be replaced by fear as she grabbed one of the knives out of the drawer and stabbed him in the middle of his chest, attempting to aim for the heart but missing. As blood spurted onto the floor, Chase grabbed the blade out of his sternum and neared Amy with it, taking her down to the ground with a swift spinning kick and straddling her, the knife held between them as Chase bent down into her face, exhaling heavily with his rancid breath.

"You and I both know how this is going to go. Why not just give up?"

Swallowing hard in response, Amy felt all the confidence she had had in herself after the changes quickly ebb away, causing her to become the scared little girl she had been all of her life. She was trapped between a rock and a hard place—a knife and something with fangs—and there was no way out from underneath. She didn't know why Chase was here or how this was going to end, but Amy had a feeling the rest of her life was going to be this way if she survived, that she was going to be sought out and hunted by things grasping for power, power that was hers that they wanted for themselves. The thought was swallowing, the knowledge that she was going to be on the receiving end of a sharp blade more than once handicapping her as she started hyperventilating beneath Chase DuPonte's muscular body stationed on her hips.

"That's my Slayer!" Chase smiled, raising the knife to bring it down hard.

Suddenly, before Amy could process what Chase had said: "Hey, idjit!"

Ducking down beneath her arms, Amy turned away just as Bobby's voice filled her ears, followed quickly behind by the sight of a blade slicing directly through Chase's neck. Knowing from last time that she was about to be splattered with blood, Amy tried to cover as much of her as possible, feeling the pelting of the scarlet spray seconds after she did so. As she twisted onto her stomach from where she had been lying on her back, Amy felt Chase's body fall off of hers, hitting the floor with a deep, resounding thud. Turning over and nearly wanting to barf at the smell of the tangy blood mixed with year-old garbage, something she could probably pick up on due to her heightened senses, Amy's shoulders convulsed forward, though she managed to keep down the bile that threatened to rise. However, after nearly four days of vomiting, it was likely she didn't have anything else to throw up.

Sliding out from where Chase's dead legs tangled with hers, Amy kicked her way free and got to her feet, feeling sticky and grimy. In front of her, Amy looked at Bobby Singer as he stood with Taylor's machete in his hand, probably grabbed from underneath the couch, the spot Taylor had placed it when she thought she was going to have to do away with her best friend. Sending him a thankful smile, Amy looked behind him to the cleared-out hallway, grateful that no one had seen that except for the two of them and Taylor standing in the doorway, her roommate looking both confused and disgusted, probably having put a meaning to the words Chase had muttered directly before Bobby had taken his head off.

"We ain't done yet, kid," Bobby said, nodding toward Chase's decapitated corpse and distracting her from the thought that wanted to creep into her mind, noticing that Chase DuPonte's head was now sitting five feet away from the remainder of him and resting on its neck, a sight Amy never wanted to see again but having a feeling she would. "If I'm right about this thing, we got a long way to go."

"What is it?" Amy asked, sniffling and washing blood off of her face with her sleeve.

"It's called a Nidhogg. Old Norse legend. It eats bodies after they've been killed, and it's true form ain't pretty," Bobby answered, keeping his eyes on Chase as though expecting him to get up and start walking. "You ever see a dragon in the movies or on TV? It's like that, but without wings. Ugliest son of a bitch you'll ever meet. Crafty sucker, too."

"How does it… I mean, how does it look like Chase DuPonte, then? Possession?"

"Nothin' like that," Bobby frowned. "This thing lives inside of a person like a parasite, but the person has to be dead before it can crawl on in. I'm guessin' this guy wasn't dead longer than an hour before the Nidhogg got in, probably had his vampire pal feed on him first to get his body nice and ready."

Biting her lip, Amy slumped her shoulders, turning her eyes from where they had been on Bobby to Chase's remains, suddenly more disturbed by what Bobby had said rather than what the Nidhogg had. Did the different species of creepy creatures often converge with one another toward a common goal? A vampire and a Nidhogg joining teams didn't sound like a good idea, but neither did the thought of witches and demons scheming together or spirits and werewolves. Was there some kind of alliance that she didn't know about, something that made things all the more difficult for Hunters, for her? One demon was bad enough, but with added firepower, they would be indestructible. In all honesty, the thought worried her.

Seeming to read her thoughts, Bobby shook his head and laughed, apparently her suppositions too crazy to be realized. "I don't think the forces of darkness will ever be caught dead minglin' with anything that isn't their own kind. You don't have nothin' to worry about in that area. You can trust me on that. These things have too much damn pride to even try."

Smiling weakly in response, Amy let the grin fall as Chase's body began to move on its own, the sight of something black poking out of its headless neck causing Amy to shiver. Within seconds, what looked like a snake with arms was crawling toward the kitchen, raised up on its stomach high enough so that its appendages could be free of dragging on the ground. Running for it, Bobby slashed the machete at the Nidhogg before it disappeared behind the refrigerator, causing him to swear.

"Where the hell does this damn thing think it's going?"

Nearing the fridge, Amy tried to peer behind it, pressing her hands lightly to the face to look into the cracks between it and the cabinets right before the large appliance began to rock, falling forward a second later as the creature used brute strength to push it onto her. Catching it right in time, Amy held the old Frigidaire up, pushing it back into place haphazardly while the rest of the kitchen began to come alive, cabinets and drawers shuffling open as the Nidhogg traveled behind them. Within minutes, knives and forks were flying toward Amy's head, the girl dodging the utensils just in time for the creature to come leaping toward her. Shouting for the machete, Amy caught the weapon by its hilt and swung it like a baseball bat, cutting the Nidhogg in half and watching as black blood sprayed everywhere.

Not giving up, the creature left behind its tail and continued to travel using its hands, the thing not fast enough to dodge Amy as she brought the blade down again, pinning the Nidhogg in place with the tip of the instrument and crouching down beside it. Studying its face, Amy furrowed her brow as she saw its eyes narrowed on her, a very human expression fixed there, as though it wanted to speak and demand that she let it go. Struggling against where it was being held, the creature finally gave up, the blood leaking out of it becoming too much for it to survive. Pulling the weapon free, Amy brought it down again in a killing slice, hacking the Nidhogg's head off and watching it fall flat and lifeless on the kitchen floor.

Stepping back as the diced Nidhogg stained the linoleum floor in more than one place, its black blood oozing out of its dismembered body parts and heading for her feet, Amy bit her lip, her mind already focused on something else aside from the creature that probably should have been harder to kill than it was. Instead, her head was racing, trying to make sense of the thoughts floating around as though looking for a place to land. What had that thing called her? And what the hell did it mean? For some reason, the name carried a ring of truth in it, though she didn't know why. Turning to look at Bobby, Amy grimaced before opening her mouth to speak, something telling her that he would be the one to ask when it came to information. Noticing that the older man already had all of his attention turned to her, Amy saw that he looked as though he was anticipating what she was about to say, the expression on her face probably giving it away.

"Bobby, can I ask you something?"

Nodding, Bobby attempted to smile comfortingly. "Shoot."

Sighing quietly, Amy bit her lip, unsure of how to phrase her question but instead just going for it, getting the sense that no matter how she posed her inquiry, Bobby would respond honestly, the man seeming unlike John in the way that he grinned at her, as though urging her on with patience rather than turning to her with a glare. Clearing her throat, Amy rolled her shoulders back and let out a deep breath, bracing herself for the reply.

"What's a… what's a Slayer?"


	14. Chapter 12

TWELVE

Dwight Hall, Yale  
New Haven, Connecticut  
Tuesday, November 7, 2006  
8:18 AM

_**V**__ampire Slayers, or Lamia Interficientis, are often known by the singular name of Slayers. First discovered in 800 BC in the Grecian city-state of Delphi, the Oracle, Pythia, is cited as being the initial founder of the Slayer breed, having come upon the unearthing in a prophecy foretold to her by the god Apollo, speaking on behalf of his twin sister, Artemis. _

_ As legend states, Pythia delivered the news of Slayers to Homer, famous philosopher and writer of _The Iliad _and _The Odyssey_, who in turn spread the story throughout Delphi, alerting all of the metropolis that a girl would soon be born with the strength of demons, the skill of Spartans, and the resilience of a warrior, given gifts to be used to fight against the evil that brimmed the city. Before long, women who were with child living inside Delphi's expansive conurbation were collected to be studied, a psychic hired to do readings on the women and their expected children. _

_ However, spotting the first Slayer was harder than the people of Delphi had anticipated. Though many children were born in the year Pythia had predicted, none of them were endowed with the abilities attributed to her prophecy, Pythia's tale automatically becoming debunked and forgotten for twenty-one years. On a summer night in 779 BC, a woman by the name of Anthousa was stricken ill, her body overcome with heat and cold before she was taken away from her husband and daughter, neighbors praying to the Gods that Anthousa become well. _

_ Doctors worked well into the night, trying basic remedies such as water to treat her burning flesh and fire to cure her icy skin. When neither solution worked, the physicians deemed her illness fatal, keeping Anthousa under the impression that she would be dead come sunset on the next day. Setting her affairs in order, the woman prepared to be taken off into the afterlife, only to be disappointed when her conditioned worsened, not ending in death like she had expected and yearned for while enduring the pain._

_ On the morning after the woman's twenty-first birthday, it was recorded that Anthousa's agony had supplied her strength, skill, and resilience that was unmatched even by that of the fiercest warrior Delphi had to offer. By nightfall, she had been cast out of the metropolis, the city's inhabitants dispelling her as unnatural and fearful. _

_ Although no one knows what happened to Anthousa directly after leaving the city-state, it is recorded that the woman's daughter, Pherenike, was overcome with the same disease that had stuck her mother years ago. In turn, Pherenike's daughter, Eudokia, suffered an identical illness. Throughout generations, the ailment passed through the female line, eventually splitting in two when Korinna and Chrystanthe, the twins who had moved to Sparta to be accepted by the city's combatant people, had both begotten families and had both been stricken by the malady that the women before them had suffered. _

_ As time progressed, the Slayer line eventually spanned multiple families, becoming spread throughout Greece and Bulgaria before expanding northward toward Europe in later years. With growing numbers in concentrated areas, a fascination had begun to catch the attention of scholars, some of them administering tests in order to produce documentation on the abnormal strain of humanity. In the span of centuries, only some information was recorded, most of it highlighting the fact that the abilities had no point of origin or expected expiration date. _

_ In the early 1900s, it was estimated that the Slayer line had multiplied to twelve thousand, doubling a century later, and becoming more considered as years passed. With the discovery of genetic technology, science played an important role in the testing and studying of Slayers, with neurologists and genealogists taking to examining the Chosen women, never filing reports in fear of the information falling into the wrong hands. By 1980, the intelligence gained from their analysis provided much of what is known today._

_ In one report, written by a Dr. Herbert J. Bell, it was noted that Slayers are able to lift up to four-hundred pounds unassisted, endure hours of physical stimulation without tiring, and heal wounds in half the allotted time. In addition, it was also noted by a sleep specialist, Dr. Leonard Keen, that some of their focus group experienced dreams that disturbed their slumber. When asked to record what they saw, most reports matched an event that had unfolded within the day of the dream, often happening thousands of miles away, making it impossible for the incident to be self-inflicted or delivered through word of mouth. _

_ Moreover, other abilities were recorded, such as implanted military tactical knowledge, the sensing of nearby supernatural entities, and a innate prowess with weapons, all of which being endowments all women shared. Furthermore, the women who had given birth, either before or after the illness that struck on their twenty-first birthdays, had all begotten female children, some of them twins of the same gender. However, there is no evidence of this being more than coincidence, scientists choosing not to entertain the subject as of yet. _

_ As decades go on, with technology ever-increasing at the end of the twentieth century, it is possible that scientists will continue to study and report on the knowledge of Slayerkind. Unfortunately, in recent years, with the rise of demonic activity and the paranormal presence, the women who had initially been eager to learn more about themselves and their fellow Slayers have become reticent, rumors of both Hunters, their male counterparts, and the forces of darkness rising together to eliminate the line driving them into hiding._

_- Elliot Richards, 1998_

Shutting the screen of her laptop, Amy swallowed hard before leaning forward against the desk in her bedroom, her stomach rumbling from hunger at the same time as worry began to rise in her chest, causing her heart to beat abnormally fast as she took in the information she had been reading on the web for the greater part of the last hour.

It was just her and Taylor left in their suite while Bobby drove out to West Hartford to collect a couple of books from his motel to bring back to Dwight Hall, the traffic out on Chapel Street probably preventing him from returning as quickly as she had expected him to. After Amy had asked him for information on Slayers, the name the Nidhogg possessing Chase DuPonte had called her just before she killed it, the older man had told her he wasn't as informed on them as he should be, promising to leave and come back with something that might help her learn more about the title.

As soon as he was gone, Amy had made a move to clean up the mess the fight between her and the creature had left behind, instead getting shooed away by Taylor as her friend snapped at her, eyeing Amy as though she was something more dangerous than the vampire her roommate had initially believed her to be. Feeling uncomfortable with the way the other girl had been glaring at her, Amy had headed into the now-doorless bathroom to take a shower and bandage up the wounds she had sustained during the altercation, noticing that though it was still covered with blood, the lesion in her side that the broken coffee table had inflicted on her was already closed up and was the brown color of a scab, the size of it telling her that she normally would have needed stitches to bind the skin back together.

The moment Amy had stepped out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel and with dark hair dripping into the yellow and green bruises on her face, she had noticed that her friend had already managed to clear away most of the rubble, the broken furniture and snake-like creature gone, a metal trash barrel that seemed to have been taken from out in the courtyard filled to the brim with flames that licked the side. From behind the refrigerator, the sound of brushes scrubbing the floor came, as well as muttered cursing that reached Amy's ears as clear as day, informing her that Taylor was cleaning up the blood the Nidhogg had left behind, and wasn't happy about it despite the fact that she had volunteered to do so.

Heading into her bedroom and shutting the door quietly, Amy had placed her bloody pajamas on the floor before changing into normal clothes, wrapping her hair in a towel and leaving it as she sat and read the information the web provided. Though she had found a startling amount of search results pointing her to _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_, Amy had eventually been able to find something pertaining to what she was looking for, smiling slightly when she discovered that the essay she had engulfed herself in had been one written by a professor at the University of New Hampshire. As she soaked up the information, finding it fascinating at the same time as frightening, Amy had eventually closed her computer down, her heart beating quickly when she came to the conclusion of the composition, the idea that Slayers had gone into hiding because of a rise in demon attacks scaring her immensely.

Getting up from her chair and no longer able to endure the hunger pains that had been eating away at her for the past few days, Amy let her damp hair down from where it had been wrapped, grabbing a sweatshirt out of the closet and tugging it on, putting the hood up as soon as she left the suite, Taylor still throwing a fit over having to scrub the floor. Taking the elevator and hoping she would run into Bobby on her way toward the dining hall, Amy reached for her student card as soon as she was through the canteen's doors, finding that the place was practically deserted following the breakfast rush. Grabbing one of everything as she made her rounds through the various food stations, remembering that the last time she had done so had ended with everything tasting horrible, Amy picked at the assortment of meals sitting on the plates, testing them before making her way toward the freshman sitting at the checkout machine. Noticing that the guy wasn't paying attention as he focused on his sociology work, Amy passed her card under the reader, waiting for it to turn green, before sneaking her way out of the cafeteria, carrying the tray back up to the top floor of Dwight Hall and finding Bobby standing in the living room by the time she returned.

"Hungry?" Bobby laughed as soon as he saw Amy and her laden tray, moving one of the end tables out from around the skewed couch for her to set her plates on. Beginning to wolf down the toast that was nearest to her hand, Amy nodded in the form of an answer, certain she was being a pig but strangely not caring. It was as though, even after days of not eating, the fight between her and Chase had kicked her appetite into overdrive, everything tasting delicious even though she knew it was anything but. Continuing to smirk, and not seeming to judge her for her eating habits like her parents would, Bobby instead pulled a couple of books out of a duffle bag on the floor, explaining what they were while Amy continued to make her way through the fifteen different meals in front of her. "I don't know how much these will help you, but they're the only ones I brought from home. Most of 'em include information on demons, but I remember seein' a few things on Slayers in there, too."

Stopping what she was doing, Amy placed her fork aside and swallowed the mouthful of eggs she was currently ingesting, opening the first book Bobby handed her to skim it, just as hungry for information as she was for food. Seeing that most of the pages contained exactly what Bobby said, with different sections dedicated to defining the different species of demons, Amy only managed to get half-way through the book before she noticed that the older man was taking a seat in one of the wing chairs that had been positioned on both sides of the television, dragging it forward to sit closer. Stopping a few feet in front of her, exactly where the coffee table would have been had it not been broken, Bobby leaned against his knees, speaking in a calm, quiet tone that conveyed the seriousness of what he was saying, Amy losing interest in both her breakfast and the books in her hands as she listened.

"Look, I know your daddy should be telling you this, but given the situation, I guess I ain't got a choice," Bobby said, clearing his throat. "This thing that you have inside you, it's going to attract all sorts of evil. If you're not careful, every demon between here and the gates of Hell are going to find you. Your mother, God rest her soul, learned that fact the hard way. It's what killed her." Swallowing hard, Amy listened as Bobby continued, her heart beating heavily in her chest in anticipation to hearing someone talk about Morgan Callahan, acknowledging that she was real outside of the confines of her journal. "I'm only tellin' you this because I want you to be careful. In the last year alone, the world has gotten dangerous, demons multiplying in numbers that no one's ever seen. They're up to something, and your daddy was killed because he got in the way; and if his boys don't get smart, the same thing's going to happen to them. There's some type of storm brewin' and it's not something you want to get caught up in, but it's not like you got a choice. Bein' a Slayer, from what your mom had me understand, is like walking around with a target on your back. You let anyone know what you are and they'll come gunnin' for you, guaranteed."

Bunching her jaw and widening her eyes, Amy sat up straighter in her seat, her breathing stopped as she saw the gravity of what Bobby was telling her on his face. She could tell, curiously, that he was concerned for her, and though they had only known each other for two days, he felt obligated to prevent her from making the mistake others before her had presumably made. Nodding in acceptance, Amy and Bobby remained still while Amy played with the lip of the small milk carton in front of her, lost in thought as she stared at the cartoon that illustrated the side. She had known that this was serious from the time she had finished the changes the night before, but hadn't known how serious. With what Bobby had just said, Amy gathered that she was going to have to keep her head down, and was probably going to have to ease her way into hunting to keep from arousing suspicions. A girl who lived in upper-class Illinois and went to Yale didn't suddenly quit living the high life to chase down the forces of darkness. Anyone who learned that was bound to become suspicious.

Nodding once he realized his words had sunk in, Bobby leaned back in his chair to pull a slip of paper out of his pocket, placing it on the table in front of her. On a small, lined page, a name, address, and phone number stared up at her in scrawled handwriting, the name on it reading Elliot Richards. Recognizing it from what she had just been looking at on the web, Amy raised her eyebrows as she gazed over at Bobby, wondering how he had known what she had been doing prior to his arrival, if it wasn't just coincidence.

"A buddy of mine works over at the University of New Hampshire as a metaphysical and paranormal studies professor; knows a good deal about Slayers," Bobby said, tapping the paper in front of her. "He'll be able to tell you anything you want to know."

"Thank you," Amy said, taking the notebook sheet and placing it into her sweatshirt pocket, turning her attention back to the milk carton as she continued to play with it, curious as to whether or not it would be safe to give the guy a call considering what Bobby had just told her.

Putting it in the back of her mind while the two sat in silence, Amy pursed her lips before something else caught her attention, the comic on the side of her drink. Narrowing her eyes at it, Amy tilted her head while she read it, frowning. In a small square outlined in black, a truck shaped exactly like John's sat beside a pair of stick figures and below a couple of speech bubbles, the text inside it reading, "How much gas mileage you getting there, Bob?" "Three miles a gallon on a good day, Skip."

Furrowing her brow as Bobby stood up from his chair, Amy bit her lip, a sudden thought popping into her head as she watched the older man pick up his now-empty duffle bag off the floor. Last month, right before John had left Amy for the last time, her father had unearthed her mother's journal from underneath the backseat, grabbing it out from under a trap door Amy had barely been able to see. Beside the diary, hundreds of other books had been stacked back there, books that might or might not contain information about Slayers. All at once, Amy was curious as to what happened to those numerous old volumes and everything else John had owned prior to dying, her heart sinking into her stomach as she thought about his passing. Though she hadn't known him that well, and though he had been gruff and intimidating, it was possible that the two of them could have had more of a relationship had he lived longer. While that seemed like a fairy tale compared to the reality of the situation, that John had died because of a demon and now the demons would be coming for Amy if she ever revealed the truth about herself to anyone else, she still felt forlorn over the what if. For most of her life, she had wanted to know her real father, but now that he was gone, she wouldn't get a chance to do so. Instead, she was going to have to do the best with what was available to her, meaning that she had to know something before Bobby Singer left for good.

Clearing her throat, Amy got up from the couch and followed Bobby to the front door as he angled to leave, stopping at the threshold as the man noticed that there was something on her mind. Turning to look at her, Bobby raised his eyebrows curiously, prompting Amy to ask her question before she would lose her chance.

"Hey, uh, Bobby… whatever happened to John's truck?"

Pursing his lips as though disapproving of her inquiry, Bobby shook his head. "Far as I know, John drove out to an abandoned foundry in Lincoln, Nebraska right before he was killed. According to Sam, a couple of demons slashed his tires before they took him hostage in order to get to his boys. My guess is it's probably still there."

Chewing the inside of her cheek for a moment, Amy nodded slowly, not sure what to say, but instead formulating a plan in her mind. If she flew out to Lincoln tonight, she would get there by morning, giving her both daylight and time to search through the contents of the cab. However, explaining a massive airline charge to Joel and Jennifer Forester once they checked the credit card receipt was going to be difficult. While neither of her adopted parents had spoken to her since Joel had dropped her off at school back in August, she doubted they would stay quiet once a four-hundred-dollar bill came to their house. Realizing that now that she was twenty-one, she could rent a car and drive there, she also realized that it would probably be more expensive to do so.

Looking up just as Bobby hitched his bag closer to his collarbone, a smile grew on Amy's face as she noticed that he seemed to understand what she was about to say, the man appearing incredibly intuitive when it came to whatever she was thinking. Beckoning toward where her bedroom door sat, Bobby sighed quietly. "Get your stuff. I'll wait."

Grinning despite the fact that it would probably be frowned upon by most people that she was leaving Yale to head to Nebraska with a virtual stranger, Amy hurried back inside the suite, racing to collect her things and get the ball rolling.


	15. Epilogue

EPILOGUE

Singer Salvage  
Sioux Falls, South Dakota  
Thursday, November 9, 2006  
9:08 PM

**B**y the time Amy and Bobby arrived in Lincoln, Nebraska, it was nearly dark. The sun was a pinkish orange on the horizon, casting a dull blue with dense yellow stripes on the ground, the light from the sun reflecting off the windshield of Bobby's rusted tow truck as they headed off of Interstate 80 and traveled along the back roads to the foundry where John's massive black vehicle sat abandoned in front of a desolate building.

As soon as Amy saw the thing—remembering the multitude of occasions that she had either been inside of it or seen it barreling its way toward some undisclosed location down the various streets in the various cities they had traveled to together during the summer—her heart sank in her chest, the idea that the man whose appearance matched the intimidation the truck emitted being gone forever finally hitting her like a sack of bricks. While she hadn't known John Winchester that long, or hadn't known much about him aside from what he did, Amy still felt the loss as if she had, a growing hole in the pit of her stomach becoming wider the closer she and Bobby got to the dusty, dented automobile sitting on its rims in the gravel lot.

Bobby had remained in the cab of his own truck while Amy had hopped out, the older man giving her space to search for whatever she was looking for on her own. As the engine died behind her, Amy had glanced back for a second to see Bobby's approving nod, immediately heading for the passenger's side door of John's left-behind vehicle like she had so many times before—surprised that the cab was open to anything and everything that might have wanted to strip the contents of both the interior and exterior. Amazingly, everything had been left just as it was the night Amy had last seen him, the man's stack of books sitting haphazardly piled in the backseat while a half-empty cup of coffee remained in the cup holder underneath the radio.

Taking a deep breath, Amy had begun to slowly clear out the interior of the truck, placing as much as she could on the passenger's seat and floorboards, scanning each book that she grabbed for content and separating them accordingly. After an hour, she had only managed to get through a handful of thick volumes, the sun sinking down and making it impossible to read the ancient text on the pages in front of her. By the time night came, Bobby had joined her at her side, placing a hand on her shoulder the moment she was suddenly overcome with tears, the idea that she was searching through her dead biological father's belongings bothering her more than she thought it would. Wiping at her stained cheeks while she took a few steps away from the truck, Bobby slammed the door she had propped open, telling her to stand back while he hitched the vehicle to his to take back to his house in Sioux Falls.

Agreeing to the idea, Amy had watched as the hook of the tow truck grabbed the base of John's old GMC, with Bobby getting out to secure the two together for the four-hour drive up to South Dakota. During the entire trip, Amy had kept her eyes glued to John's vehicle behind them as though silently willing that it remain attached to the back of Bobby's, the man giving her reassuring statements every now and again to calm her down, telling her they were bolted together and weren't coming apart, no matter how many pot holes they hit in the road. Though she knew she should be more concerned over heading to a stranger's house in a state she had never visited rather than fretting over the automotive remains of her deceased father, Amy couldn't be bothered to care. She had a feeling that, should anyone try anything, she could take care of herself. She wasn't the meek little girly girl she had been nearly a week ago.

By the time the two trucks pulled into a dirt lot outside of a faded blue Colonial home, passing under a wrought iron sign reading Singer Auto Salvage, Amy had pushed the worry that John's vehicle would slide away from her thoughts and instead became engulfed in the feeling of awkwardness that came over her. As they passed through the aisles of cars sitting stacked on top of each other, all of them more than rusted beyond repair, Amy wondered what she was going to do once she finished going through John's belongings. The tires of his truck were slashed, meaning it wasn't going anywhere unless Bobby happened to have replacements sitting somewhere within the sprawling automotive graveyard, and she didn't want to put him out by staying with him longer than a night. The man had already been kind enough to take her nearly fifteen hundred miles without asking for her to pay for gas or for the rooms they had stayed in during their short rest stops, and she wasn't about to mooch off of him any more than she already had.

However, on the alternative, she knew she couldn't go back to Yale. Prior to leaving—grabbing her computer, a good amount of clothes, and the _Archangels and Demons _book John had given her directly after Bailey Yost's attack—Taylor had made it clear that she didn't want Amy to return to their suite. Threatening to alert the authorities of what had happened inside of their dorm, Taylor had finished cleaning the space, leaving the headless body of Chase DuPonte out in the open for Amy to see that her roommate was serious. Though she was certain the girl was bluffing, that involving the police would also indicate Taylor had been somewhat involved, Amy didn't want to take the chance, promising to have someone come by and clear out her belongings soon—the fact that both of them knew that Amy didn't know anybody who would be able do so not seeming to be an issue.

In all honesty, it appeared as though Taylor was more jealous of her friend than scared or mad, acting as though Amy had taken her favorite toy rather than became something she couldn't control. As her friend snapped and swore at her, Amy had begun to get the feeling that Taylor would have preferred that Amy were a vampire rather than a Slayer, as though that would keep their friendship in balance somehow. Rather, Amy had become strong and agile through no fault of her own, and it appeared as though Taylor blamed her for it every step of the way. If she had to guess, Amy could only assume that, if it came down to it, Taylor would want the abilities Amy had inherited for herself, seeming to think she deserved them instead.

On the way out of Dwight Hall, Bobby had noticed the difference in Taylor, bringing it up as soon as they were out of Connecticut as if to give Amy time to process the girl's sudden change in attitude. According to him, that was the typical reaction from Hunters, that they felt they deserved the preternatural abilities because they put themselves on the line rather than were born into the job. Apparently, it was one of the many reasons Amy was going to have to keep her mouth shut and her capabilities on the down-low, some Hunters becoming just as dangerous as demons when the enthralling idea of power came into play, stories having been spread in the past that some Hunters had killed Slayers in cold blood because of it.

Taking his words of warning to heart, Amy made a pact with herself to keep her secret as it was, remaining silent the entire trip to Lincoln and now remaining just as quiet as Bobby's truck pulled up to the front of his house. As soon as she finished gutting John's vehicle for content, Amy was going to have to figure out what she wanted to do. In the back of her mind, Amy knew that going back to Yale was out of the question, just as returning home to Northbrook and the Foresters was no longer an option. Though she could easily make the trip to Illinois to pick up a few things, her car included, something about that seemed dangerous, Bobby's advice giving her the felling that eyes are on her at all times. Instead, she was going to have to do something different, maybe live the life John Winchester had prior to passing, spending years on the road, going from town to town and working jobs to save people from the paranormal entities that threatened to disrupt their lives. Truthfully, the option seemed to be the only one she had, a swallowing feeling in her gut telling her that this was all she had to look forward to now.

Hopping out of the truck as soon as it stopped just outside of a mechanic's garage built as an addition to the large home Bobby owned, Amy looked around to see the dented and broken remains of the car she had dreamt about a few nights ago, though looking better than it had then, someone obviously working on it to restore it to its former glory. It was sitting only two feet from her, its nose pressed against Bobby's tow truck, the glossy black paint of it matted with dust and debris. Reaching out to touch it, Amy noticed that the metal was just as cold as she had imagined, though didn't give her the feeling of loss like she had expected. Instead, all she felt was alarm. If that car was here, did that mean…

Swallowing hard, Amy looked around for signs of Sam and Dean, her heart hammering in her chest at the idea of encountering them after their last abysmal meeting and departing. For some reason, she didn't want to see them now, getting the sense that the feeling would be mutual by the time all three of them happened upon each other. During their previous congregation, Amy had been cornered like a kitten by two dogs, Dean snapping at her while Sam just stared. Though she got the feeling that the latter was the kinder of the two, she still had the sense to know that he probably knew the truth about their connection as well as she did, and probably felt just as betrayed as she had. While they had had time to consider the idea, Amy had done nothing but accept the fact that she had two brothers she was related to by blood, coming to the decision that she wanted nothing to do with them, especially since she already had a family of her own. However—now that the tables have turned and now that she was different, unable to ever return home—was her being here at the same time as the brothers coincidence or fate? Or did Bobby do it on purpose?

Glancing back at him as the sound of the hydraulic lift carrying John's truck a few feet off the ground broke through the silent night, Amy could see that Bobby hadn't brought her to Sioux Falls as a ploy to get the three Winchester kids together, but rather out of convenience. Sitting against the back wall of his garage were stacks of tires in different sizes. It was possible all he had been focusing on was fixing the truck, forgetting entirely that Sam and Dean were also there, seemingly repairing their vehicle as well.

Swallowing hard, Amy made a move to round the truck just as the sound of a screen door slamming shut at the same time as the lift stopped cut through the air. Remaining where she was, slightly hidden by Bobby's rusted automobile, Amy listened to a sleepy, confused voice as one of the brothers asked what their dad's truck was doing there. Recognizing the lighter lilt as that belonging to Sam, the younger of the two, Amy let out a deep breath, the idea of running straight into Dean, the more hostile of the pair, right off the bat giving her anxiety.

"I thought Dad left that thing back in Nebraska," Sam said, a question in his tone.

"He did," Bobby answered. "But your sister wanted to see it. I figured I'd fix her up with it while I got the time. Where's your brother?"

"My sist… Amy? She's _here_? Now?" Sam asked, sounding incredulous, obviously disappointed in Bobby's actions as Bobby nodded. It was just as Amy had imagined, that neither brother was any more excited to see her as she was to see them. Judging by the long silence that passed, she could only guess that the two men were glaring at one another, Sam finally speaking up after a long minute. "I don't think that's a good idea. Not now. Not after Dad—"

"She has to stay here, Sam. She ain't got no place else to go."

Pursing her lips, Amy let out a deep sigh before coming out from her hiding place, feeling like a small child that had been caught snooping. Walking toward the bright light of the garage, Amy swallowed hard as her heart hammered thickly in her chest, her eyes pointed toward the ground to avoid both Sam's and Bobby's gaze. For some reason, Amy had had a feeling that this meeting was inevitable, but she hadn't wanted it to be so soon, directly after John's death only a week ago. In all honestly, she had been trying to put it off for as long as possible, hoping that they would never cross paths, especially with the awkward silences and anger that was bound to brew between them. Amy could only imagine how the two brothers felt, to have their dad tell them for decades that they were his only kids, only to discover that there was someone else. Amy knew from Morgan's journal that John had lost his wife, the boys' mother, and that he had confessed as much the night the two had met, claiming that sleeping with Morgan had been the same as cheating, even though years had passed between Mary's death. Truthfully, Amy was willing to bet any amount of money that Sam and Dean already held a resentment for her because of this, as though her existence was a stain on their relationship with their father and the memory of their mother.

Looking up the closer to the entrance of the garage she got, Amy finally chanced a glance at Sam, finding that he had his eyes locked on her, his head tilted to the side like hers often did whenever she was confused or sensed that something was wrong. Leveling her gaze with his, the two remained staring at one another while Bobby continued to work on John's truck. There was something about Sam that caused her to feel a supernatural hum in her chest, as though there was an aura around him that seemed abnormal, something dangerous like the sensation Amy had felt prior to being attacked by the Nidhogg. In his reflected glare, Amy could tell that he sensed the same thing about her, as though recognizing the oddness but becoming baffled by it.

"Hi," Amy said quietly after a moment, clearing her throat uncomfortably.

"Uh, hi."

However, before either of them could say anything more than that, a figure appeared at the screen door. Pounding his way outside with a deep, upset look on his face, his eyes darting around for Sam underneath mussed hair, was Dean. Heart catching in her throat, Amy let out a slight gasp as soon as Dean's eyes shifted between his brother to her, his expression automatically changing from worried to angry.

"What's she doing here?" Dean snapped, looking from Sam to Bobby as though they had conspired against him, the cut that ran from his hairline to the front of his right eyebrow creasing as his forehead wrinkled in disgust. "Anybody wanna explain this?" Eyes darting between them, Dean's gaze shuffled through the three people in front of him before landing on John's truck up on the lift, causing him to scowl even more. "Or that?"

Slumping her shoulders as Dean's stare fell onto her, his glare boring into her eyes, Amy swallowed hard as Dean neared her, his steps measured as though frustration was rising in him, reminding Amy of John and the way the man seemed to be harboring a hurricane. Stopping only inches from her, Dean looked down at Amy, their slight height difference still enough to intimidate her despite the fact that she contained nearly four times the strength as he did. As sage green stare met sage green stare, Amy bunched her jaw and softened her gaze, hoping against hope that Dean wasn't about to unleash whatever fury he felt for her right here and now.

"Listen, sister, I don't know what you think you're doing here, but you need to leave," Dean said, his words snippy in his gravelly voice. "We're not about to have some big family reunion, or sit around the campfire singing _Cumbaya_ and holding hands, okay? So whatever you came for, you can go ahead and forget it."

"I didn't come for you," Amy said, her firm tone surprising her despite the uncertainty that she felt in her gut. "I came for that truck."

"That truck doesn't belong to you," Dean retorted.

Swallowing hard as the confidence she had felt only a second before ebbed away, Amy recognized that Dean was right. If anyone should get the truck—not that she wanted the vehicle, only whatever pertained to her inside it—it should be the brothers, not her. Though she could understand what Dean was thinking, that she was trying to snatch what little he had left of John Winchester out from under him and Sam, Amy also knew that it was more than likely that Dean wasn't going to let her near the vehicle no matter what, no matter how she explained the reasoning behind going all the way to Lincoln to retrieve it. Even though he had three natural inches on her and she had twice his muscle, Dean was going to do his damndest to keep her away from anything that belonged to him or his father, already marking it as personal property that she wasn't Winchester enough to touch.

"Dean, leave the girl alone," Bobby said, taking off one of the truck's slashed tires and dropping it on the ground, holding it with the tips of his fingers while he kept it balanced against his leg. "It ain't her fault, what happened to your daddy."

Scoffing disbelievingly, Dean rolled his eyes and turned back toward the house, reaching for the handle of the screen door before pivoting to look at Amy once again, irritation set deep in his expression. "I don't want to see you around here, you got that?"

Bunching her jaw, Amy slumped her shoulders but didn't give any sort of response before Dean stomped into the house, leaving Amy alone with Bobby and Sam as the two men attempted to lift one of the huge, thirty-eight inch tires into the wheel well. Letting out a small sigh, Amy turned to head deeper into automotive graveyard surrounding the house, the darkness the waning moon cast making the area look like a fearful labyrinth of cars. Walking past the first row and not stopping until she reached the edge of the property, Amy paused at the sound of her name being called, turning around and retracing her steps a moment later to see Bobby waving her over, Sam now gone back inside the house to rejoin his brother, the noise their arguing created carrying out to Amy's bionic ears.

_"What does she think she's doing here with Dad's truck? Who the hell does she think she is coming here? And what gives her the right to go pick that thing up? It was better off being left where it was. What could she possibly want with it?"_

_ "I don't know, Dean. But you didn't have to be so rude."_

_ "I can be as rude as I want to, Sammy. That girl has no right to be here!" _

_ "I think Dad would want—"_

_ "You don't know what Dad would want, Sam. He's not here. He's gone."_

Running her hands through her hair absently as she attempted to block out the exchange going on inside the house, Amy neared the truck, noticing that Bobby had replaced the tires in no time at all and had already lowered the vehicle down to the ground. Holding out his hand, Bobby kept his palm open to display a set of keys, all of them shining a bright silver in the overhead lights. Tossing the jangling metal to her when she was close enough, Bobby shook his head while Amy glanced downward at the cold metal clasped between her fingers, something on his mind that he didn't seem to want to share, something that obviously irritated him.

"What's this?" Amy asked, biting her lip.

"Sam wants you to have the truck," Bobby said with a heavy sigh. "I don't think Dean's gonna like that too much, but I'd take it if I were you. By the looks of things, I'm guessin' hangin' around here isn't going to go too well."

"I can see that," Amy frowned.

Nodding slowly, Bobby rounded to the driver's side of the vehicle, the tail end of the car pointed toward the house while the nose was positioned toward the road. Glancing at the Chevrolet that was parked directly beside it, Bobby seemed to be calculating an elapsed time for it to be fixed, focusing on it while he opened the door for Amy to get behind the wheel. Walking in measured steps toward it, Amy placed her foot on the truck's running boards, something that was barely perceptible from afar. Stopping before getting in, Amy turned to look at Bobby, jumping down a second later and staring at him.

"I just want to thank you for what you've done," Amy said, catching Bobby's attention, the man staring at her as though he rarely heard the sentiment. "If you hadn't come all the way to New Haven, I probably would have been under the impression that John was still alive and that I was going to die. So, yeah, thank you."

"No problem, kid," Bobby replied with a small smile, placing his hand on Amy's shoulder and giving her a short squeeze, a fatherly feeling coming with the motion. Relaxing under it—and remembering that the last time Amy had seen John, he had done the same thing in the bedroom of a stranger's house after they had taken down a sea monster that had been terrorizing Willow—Amy sighed deeply, her heart hurting for a moment before recovering. Seeming to understand her quick emotion, Bobby grinned sadly, dropping his hand before opening the door to the truck wider. "Listen, I want you to head over to Elliot's out in New Hampshire. I know I told you it was dangerous, but you can trust him. He'll tell you everything you need to know about…" Clearing his throat, Bobby paused for a moment, glancing at the black Chevrolet again. "And, if you want, you can swing by here any time you want. Just make sure it's on a day those boys ain't around."

Smirking despite herself, Amy nodded her head. "Yeah, I think I will. Thanks."

"Okay," Bobby said, glancing back at the house when the sound of something smashing came from inside, prompting Amy to climb into the cab of the truck and settle behind the wheel. "Be safe, alright? And be careful."

"I will," Amy grinned, shutting the door and speaking to the older man through the open window, groping around the dark cab for a scrap of paper and a pencil to jot something down on. Finding one, Amy uncapped the pen she found with her teeth and scribbled a set of digits, holding the small square of a ripped-off pink flyer out the window. "That's my phone number. If you ever want to call me and give me something to do, you can reach me on that. Sometimes I don't answer, but that doesn't mean I'm not okay."

Taking the slip from her, Bobby placed it in his shirt pocket and smiled, wrapping his hand around the part of the door the open window had provided and clapping it twice, the sound of hollow metal echoing throughout the garage. "Alright, kid. I'll see you around."

Stepping back while Amy started the engine of the truck, the roar of the monstrous growl of the vehicle filled the entire yard. Putting the thing in gear, Amy took a deep breath before placing her foot on the gas, the truck rolling forward seamlessly as she navigated it back toward the iron arch that signified the Singer Salvage lot. As she drove, the strangeness of her now owning the old GMC John had picked her up and dropped her off in the first and last time they had seen each other sent a shiver down her spine. Inside, even among the open air of the rural highway she drove down, Amy could pick up the scent of the old coffee and spell ingredients the man often smelled of, the aroma washing over her as she tried to find her way toward the main interstate.

It wasn't lost on her, the irony of the fact that, despite her persistence to keep from hunting and to get away from John, she now owned his truck and was now headed to New Hampshire to learn more about the life she had been trying to distance herself from. It was as though everything had gone full-circle, with Amy getting stuck right back where she had started—only this time, the fact that she was hunting didn't bother her. It was her birthright to do this, to kill supernatural things with the abilities she had inherited from her mother and the women before her, and that was the life she had been handed. There was no more running, no more hiding, from the truth that she was a Slayer. This was her destiny.

Merging onto I-80, Amy reached forward to punch on the radio, the sounds of the last album John had been listening to, the same one she had heard multiple times during her summer away with him, filling the cab and carrying out into the speeding wind, her hair whipping in her face as she sat back and enjoyed the music she now associated with John Winchester:

_ "Oh, father of the four winds, fill my sails, across the sea of years; with no provision but an open face, along the straits of fear…"_


End file.
